Gills Manager ready for Crawley test
Martin Allen says Crawley will pose a stern test for his side when the Gills travel to Sussex on Saturday.
extended the club’s unbeaten run to three in the league, and Martin described what he is expecting from Richie Barker’s men.draw against Bristol City last weekendA
He said: “A tough game, they just won away at Peterborough 2-0 and they signed a new centre forward for £100,000 and made him sub. We watched them on TV against Wolves and they outplayed them.
“It will be a great game for us to go and play in – a local derby, underdogs again, three games unbeaten in the league with three points.
“It could easily have been nine but I’m delighted with the players and I’m looking forward to the weekend.
“Crawley have done well, it’s a good club, it’s well managed and Richie Barker is a good bloke who has Steve Coppell behind the scenes helping him and he has some good members of staff there.
“All in all he has a good setup.
“What a journey they have been on and it’s taken a couple of years to get themselves established. They will have their eyes set on challenging for the play-offs and it shows the intentions of the club to spend £100,000 on a centre forward, it shows they mean business.”
Martin was asked if the squad had done anything special in training this week in preparation for the game.
He replied: “No, nothing. We played head tennis today which is normal for us on a Thursday, they have all been swimming and then played a bit of snooker. When you don’t win it can be upsetting and difficult but we made sure there were no injuries.
“They did their warm down sessions, had some lunch and went home to be ready for first team preparation work tomorrow morning which is the same kind of week as we had last year.
“They are a hard working group of men; they are never late for training, they all care and work hard together so when it doesn’t go as you want it to go they do get disappointed.
“When you are winning you are physically fitter, stronger, faster and happier and when you’re losing its more testing so you have to take that into account.
“We can’t allow that to creep in, especially from me.”
here.You can watch Martin's press conference by clicking