Manager Gareth Ainsworth hopes to add one more player to his squad in the transfer window.
Young left-back Lenni Cirino joined the Gills last week on a short-term deal after Ainsworth had earlier said he was looking for “one or two additions”.
Speaking ahead of their season opener, he said: “Being honest, I’m probably maybe one short, I’d love to bring another one in.
“Numbers-wise, I think we’re pretty good. There’s been a couple of surprises in pre-season, good and bad, a couple of shocks that I thought ‘I need to maybe fill in that position’ or there’s been surprises where I’m going, ‘Wow, I didn’t know he had that’.
“It’s great to be able to see some of these players and go, ‘Right, I know exactly what I want to do now.
“One more before the window would be great. I’m sure there’ll be some players going out on loan.”
With the addition of Cirino, Ainsworth’s got 22 senior outfield players in his squad, with half a dozen more young players on the fringes.
He said: “We’ve got 31 professionals at the moment (including goalkeepers), but we’ve got a lot of young lads, almost a B-team development group sitting underneath, so a lot of them will get experience elsewhere.
“We’ve got a core group that I like, just over 20 players to go into the season with.
“If you sign too many in January, it sort of means you’ve got the summer wrong. Hopefully, we don’t have to sign too many in January.
“We’re pretty good where we are but one more in would be great.
“We’ve got the backing. It’s not for a lack of resources. It’s everything, right player, right time, right moment, right geography, right mates at the club. So much goes into signing players and we’ll try and get the best ones in we can. But I’m really happy with the squad as it is.”
Cirino comes into the senior squad to challenge Max Clark for the left-back role.
Ainsworth’s hoping to send some of his younger players out on loan, which he feels Cirino would have benefitted from during his years at Blackburn Rovers.
He left there last summer without making an appearance for the club.
The Gills boss said: “He’s 22 now. He’s been held back too much at Blackburn.
“I believe that some clubs, not their fault, give bigger contracts to some of these younger players and then when they don’t play in the first team, nobody means to do it, but it ends up being sort of a negative, really, keeping them at a club too long.
“At 22, I think I’d have played about 150 games and a lot of players have, Joe Gbode and Sam Gale are really learning great stuff in the first team.
“Lenni is definitely a project, but that’s why it’s a short-term contract. We think, ‘Can he get there? Can we get the best out of him?
“He’s definitely classed as a first-team player, he trains with the first team every day.
“He’s a great lad, real humble, down-to-earth lad and we’ll make sure that we teach him the best we can and see if he makes the grade. Early signs are good.
“I think people in pre-season have been quite impressed with his athleticism, his willingness to defend and tackle and get stuck in. I don’t expect anything less from the northern lad that he is.”
Ainsworth recalls a spell himself during his early years in non-league, which set him up for first-team senior football as a professional.
He said: “The best thing I think I ever did was go to Northwich Victoria when I was 18 years old. I learned to look after myself. I learned the men’s game.
“Whether it was fate or whether it was something else, I got released by the Blackburn Rovers when I was 18.
“I got kicked. I got hit. I got cut heads. I also learned how to take men on, how to score against men and how a crowd reacts when you do certain things. That was the grounding I needed.”
“I wasn’t ready for that as my apprenticeship at Blackburn. You don’t get to do that in front of fans unless you’re very, very lucky.
“I think some of these boys are going to learn plenty from their loan moves. We’ll coax them through. But it’s nice sometimes to just be out of your comfort zone.”
