Nutter's Natter with Gillingham defender John Nutter
08:00, 26 February 2010
We’ve picked up four points from two games which is positive and it takes us into this weekend three unbeaten and looking to finally put the away day blues to rest.
We face the longest trip of the season on Saturday, so what better place is there to go and get the first win on the road than the longest?
Carisle had a poor result on Tuesday – losing 4-1 at Hartlepool – and will be looking to put it right. We are ready for them, though.
For those of you who are going to brave the journey up there, bring the usual great spirit you bring to our away games and we’ll do our best to give you the long overdue repayment of an away win.
Four points from the two home games is a decent return for us, although we could have had six.
We got the win we deserved on Saturday after a gruelling game against a well-organised Bristol Rovers side.
The first half was a fairly even affair although they never troubled AJ. The gaffer wanted us to up the tempo and put them under more pressure in the second half and we managed to do that.
It took until the 92nd minute for it to pay off but it did in the end.
It was another performance of hard work and honest graft. As I have mentioned before, I have always believed that if you put the work in you will get the result you want and that proved true on Saturday.
Bristol were coming off the back of a big win against Charlton and we knew it was going to be tough but we stuck it out and got the win we deserved thanks to Jacko’s strike.
I was pleased for Simeon when he rattled in the winner.
It’s difficult when you are the top scorer and there has been a lot of speculation surrounding you all season but he has just got his head down and continued to work hard.
Even when he was left out over the last two games he has remained 100 per cent focused and showed why he is our top scorer when he came on and notched the winner.
We also saw Dicko return and show flashes of what we know he has in his locker. Hopefully there will be more of that to come from now until the end of the season.
He’s a goalscorer and he proved that by getting our goal on Tuesday night, following up a great strike from Jacko.
That brings me onto the Leyton Orient game and one we feel we should probably have won.
We started great and took the early lead. We had the better of the first half and maybe could have added another before half-time but it wasn’t to be and we went in 1-0 up (pictured).
Second half we didn’t really get out of the blocks as we would have liked and Orient managed to put us under some pressure, with lots of diagonal balls and direct balls forward.
We stood up to that but unfortunately just as we were starting to feel comfortable again, they were awarded a soft free-kick, which they again put into our box and after a couple of ricochets, the ball landed to their centre-half who tucked it away well.
We got going again only to miss two big chances to win the match.
Firstly their keeper made a point-blank save from Dennis at a corner and then big Gal flashed a header just wide which he was tearing his hair out about after the game.