Steve Evans delivers his reaction following Gills 2-0 defeat at home to Sunderland.
Gills manager Steve Evans took plenty of positives from Gillingham’s performance despite the 2-0 defeat against Sunderland at the MEMS Priestfield Stadium on Saturday.
In what was a chaotic five minutes just after the hour mark, Jordan Graham missed a penalty and Alex MacDonald received a red card with the score level at 0-0.
Despite the frustrating loss, Evans spoke highly of his team’s performance.
He said: “That’s an outstanding Gillingham performance, Ipswich in the second half was outstanding. I will accept it to be rubbish and win, but at this stage now we have lost five games in a row.
“One game we wholeheartedly deserved to lose, the others we should’ve won two and drawn two, but we’ve lost them. We need to go again.”
The manager said recent results have been difficult to accept considering the levels of performance put in.
He added: “We just said that it’s hard to take. We need to go back and look. The performance was good, there were a lot of superb performances, I thought we bossed the midfield, we gave them problems but when you play like that, you have to win.
“Experience tells you that you can’t play as well as that in the last three or four games and take no points from them. We just need to take defeat in the right way, and channel it. How we feel tonight and how the boys feel now, the dressing room is feeling really down.
“They deserved better than that, and even on Tuesday night at Ipswich. It’s my job to come in on Monday and to lift the boys and prepare us for Crewe.
“The only option is to work hard and fight. I have never lost four or five games in my career, so what do you do?
“You get in the trenches, you get up tomorrow, you hurt tonight, don’t sleep and that’s what all the managers go through. Then you come in tomorrow morning, lift the group and we go again."