The Gills manager talks after the victory over Burton
Three defenders were on target as the Gills swept aside Burton Albion 4-1 at MEMS Priestfield Stadium this afternoon.Central defender Tom Flanagan opened the scoring, right-back Matt Fish added number two and left-back Joe Martin’s stunning volley rounded things off after Myles Weston had notched number three.
In his post-match press conference however Gills boss Martin Allen was quick to praise inspirational skipper Adam Barrett for his superb acrobatic clearance off the line just before the break.
He said “That was a great clearance, an important clearance, but it doesn’t surprise me about him. “It’s not a shock, he’s such a warrior, he’s such a leader, he’s been a great captain, it doesn’t surprise me but it was brilliant.
“He hasn’t scored but he’s gone and done that one and that’s like an equivalent of a goal – so it was good.”
However the manager was a little unhappy in the way that the Gills closed out the game and spoke of some improvements required.
He added “We’ve got to keep playing better, we should have kept the ball better in the last 25 minutes of the game, the game was won.
“I’ll help them with that, we will learn from it and we will work on it and we’ll practise it – when your winning like that you want to keep the ball, you’ve got to move the ball, you don’t need to chase any goals. You’ve got to time and position and move it around, and then the gaps will open up, we were too impatient to go and try and score more - you don’t need to play like that.
“But we’ll help them, and we’ll evolve, because when it comes after Christmas, and the crowds will be big, and we’ll be playing teams up in the top part of the division, and they’ll be what everybody calls six pointers, big ones, we need to be able to play to win those games and practise to win those games. There’s going to be some tough ones, exciting though, and even with the emotion and the excitement, this place will be absolutely rocking, everyone knows it,you can just feel it now so we do need to improve, we need to improve that area of our game.
“We’ve got a lot of young lads as well and they are so desperate to do well, sometimes you have to just slow them down a bit and play with this [head] rather than the heart.”