As Gillingham grabbed a late equaliser in the 1-1 draw with Cheltenham Town at MEMS Priestfield Stadium, assistant manager Richard Dobson praised the team’s belief.
With a brilliant shot on the outskirts of the penalty box, Elliott Nevitt scored his first goal of the season.
When Nevitt entered the game as a substitute, Dobson was thrilled. Both Sam Vokes and Seb Palmer-Houlden, who were starting in their first league games, led the Gills’ line.
The 49-year-old was pleased with both players’ performances and is eager to watch their collaboration grow.
Dobson explained why the club decided to start with a back five for the match and gave the Football Club’s medical and sports science departments credit for their diligent preparation.
The faith in the team…
The guys have a lot of faith and confidence, and I always have faith in them. At this point, you fear that they [Cheltenham] will build trenches on the edge of their box and fight to the death.
They did just that. Blocks were in. It becomes extremely challenging as soon as you lose control of the game and the opposition scores first.
In the game, we produced so many opportunities that I thought we may get another one.
Elliott Nevitt had been waiting a little while, so I told him, “You will get your goal tomorrow.” I’m so happy for him. Their disappointment at not winning the game is admirable.
That speaks a lot now, in my opinion. Their goal as a squad is to win games at home. I am quite happy with a lot of what I witnessed today, and they have played to win. I believe that we will be fine in games going forward if we can continue to replicate it.
Regarding Elliott Nevitt’s season-opening goal…
This season, he has been unlucky. He’s had a lot of close calls. In fact, I mentioned that tomorrow is the day when we chatted yesterday. I’m so happy for him. He was the man on the spot tonight, but he’s upset that he hasn’t scored as many goals as he would have liked. We only needed someone who could finish calmly when the ball was bouncing around the penalty box. Thankfully, he has discovered the corner.
Regarding the first league starts of Sam Vokes and Seb Palmer-Houlden…
That’s a great combination.
An older man and a bright, energetic young man are involved. He is a smart player who doesn’t play like a twenty-one-year-old. They worked pretty well together, in my opinion.
I believed they threatened us. With Vokesy, we posed a threat from the air, and Seb, who can run down the side, is also quite skilled in the air. It gets really difficult no matter how you try to protect against us with those.
It would have been fantastic to dovetail Elliott Nevitt, Josh Andrews, and Marcus Wyllie and have a diverse group of people to apply pressure, so it’s a great shame we haven’t had them yet this season.
The rationale behind the first formation We prefer to play with wingers, so it’s unfortunate that we have lost them in the previous few weeks. Using what we had, it was the natural formation to chose.
On Thursday, we had a conversation with Gaz [Gareth Ainsworth], and we shared our information and what we had observed with Cheltenham.
He observed them and essentially returned with the same findings.
Although playing Shad [Ogie] for the third time in a week is definitely not ideal, we are working to get him back up to speed because he needs games to perform at his peak. Using what we had on hand, picking the formation was a natural choice.
I must admit that the medical team, sports science, Minty [Paul Timson], and Jamma [James Russell] have done a fantastic job this week in getting the players healthy.
At the beginning of the week, it appeared that we would be much lighter, and their work over the past few days has been nothing short of spectacular.
I must give them a great deal of credit for putting the players we saw on the pitch today. Both Vokesy [Sam Vokes] and Seb [Palmer-Houlden] deserve praise for persevering for such a long time.
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