Ugly

Saturday 23 February - Gills 1 - 0 Huddersfield

Mark Stimson was heard to comment recently on his desire to `win ugly`. Coincidentally, Ryan Giggs also expressed similar feelings as Manchester United battle to retain the Premier League title. Clearly there are many parallels between the two clubs - often I have heard Adam Miller compared to Christiano Ronaldo….. On Saturday’s evidence, Stimson looks the more likely of the two to achieve his desire (so sorry United fans, you are just going to have to put up with scintillating football for now, ok).

Time to shape up…

16 February - Northampton Town 4-0 Gills 

Holy mothering fuck, this was an absolute shocker. I’ve defended Stimson and will continue to do so as I still think our chances of relegation have improved from “inevitable” to “likely” during the transition from Ronnie to Mark, but this was absolutely appalling, as bad as anything we saw under Jepson at the start of the season (though maybe not quite as pathetic as the Swindon and Forest games). Another frightful clobbering, against a strong and energetic but hardly inspirational opposition, and a capitulation which was downright embarrassing by the end.

The Fog

Tuesday 12 February - Gills P - P Luton

The Fog on the Medway is all mine all mine, the fog on the Medway is all mine.

Champagne Moment:- Staying indoors in the warm and not getting depressed.

Promise unrealised again

Saturday 9 February - Oldham Athletic 2 - 1 Gills

With the Gills having won only twice in eleven games prior to this (perhaps no coincidence given the 12th game was a Crewe when Dickson scored his last goals for the club), it was vital that the team tried to pick up something to arrest the slide towards the relegation zone. However we didn’t exactly travel with high expectations, Oldham might have been decimated by injuries but a miserable run of no wins, two points and one meaningless goal in five games had destroyed the hope and confidence generated by the energetic wins over Forest and Huddersfield.

Toys out of the pram

Oh dear Craig Armstrong - what a prat you are. There is something a little sad about a so called professional footballer criticising his former employers through the medium of Facebook. Yes folks, whilst most of us spend our time on there playing each other at scrabble or swapping videos of cute babies, our Craig has used Facebook as a vehicle for letting the world know of his disdain for Mark Stimson.

Many rivers to cross

Saturday 2 February - Gills 0 -0 Cheltenham

Let’s for a moment pretend we are a football manager and analyse this result in terms of ‘looking for the positives’. Well, the main one I would say is that we kept another clean sheet. On the face of it that might not seem a major achievement at home to a side immediately below us in the table, but it is worth considering that since Mark Stimson took charge we have shipped goals at a a smidgen over one per game. Okay, so that is not reach for the record books time - it doesn’t exactly compare with the legendary Pulis inspired 95-6 defence that conceded a miserly 20 in 46 games - but given the fact that throughout Rocket Ronnie Jepson’s stewardship we were letting them in at a rate of two per game (and I don’t even want to sit and work out what rate we were conceding during away matches) it does represent something of an achievement. In fact, I would say that a backline of Royce, Fuller, Nutter, Bygrave and King is probably the most solid looking defence we’ve had since the legendary Pennock - Ashby - Butters axis strode the Priestfield turf.

Toothless, not ruthless

Tuesday 29 January - Tranmere Rovers 2 - 0 Gills

For the first time since Mark Stimson took over we really didn’t perform. Results have been mixed since the Christmas demolition of Forest and some fans have been grumbling about “Stevenage Athletic” and “Grays Borough” – more so from “home only” fans but in most cases there had been mitigating circumstances over the last two months – the Port Vale game was played out in farcical conditions, we had 80% of the play at Bournemouth and couldn’t finish, were missing our entire midfield against MK Dons, had D’Urso to contend with at home to Northampton and an even more bonkers referee at home to Oldham when reduced to ten men. Even at Walsall we deserved a point against the division’s form side but with nothing up front we were always going to struggle.