Mark Stimson was in upbeat mood after Tuesday night's Carling Cup defeat, "I thought that we played quite well. Colchester are a decent side and they've just gone down from the Championship. We started quite brightly and I thought we created some good chances in the first half."

"Again, you always need that little bit of luck and I think Colchester got that with their goal. I've watched it again on the video and it's gone in, hit the bar, come back out, gone back in and it's eventually gone over the line. We didn't have any of that with our opportunities."

The Gills boss reserved special praise for his forward pairing, "I think Simeon Jackson and Mark McCammon are linking up well. Mark hasn't trained as much as the other players due to his hamstring injury. He played 90 minutes on Saturday and with being such a big lad, and the hamstring injury he had, we had to be careful with him."

"We always knew he'd start against Colchester and we thought we'd get just the 45 minutes from him. Full credit to him, he wanted to come back out for the second half. He is effective because he is so big and I think "Jacko" will get a lot off him. I was pleased with those two."