Peter Taylor blasted his side’s defending after the Gills crumbled at Priestfield.

His side led 3-2 with six minutes left but couldn’t hold on against promotion-chasing Rotherham.

Gills boss Taylor said: “It was frustrating. You know who you are playing against, a team who create chances, who can really handle the ball and are in good form. You have to defend as a group and defend better than what we did.

“In the end, as much as they are a good team, I still think they got some easy goals by poor defending from us.”

The Gills conceded their first goal after just 13 seconds – without touching the ball.

“If you are going to go a goal down, go down that early, you might as well,” said Taylor. “At least you then have enough time to come back.

“It was a bad start for us, we didn’t win the ball and they did. They got the goal too easily.”

The Gills went into the game without Leon Legge (hamstring) and Craig Fagan (ill) but were confident after beating MK Dons in their last outing.

Taylor was impressed to see his side claw their way back into the game, after their early set-back, but equally disappointed to then see them throw it all away.

“With the way Rotherham started, it could have been two or three (goals) and then the game would have been out of sight,” he said.

“But credit to the players. We hung in there and the first time we started to pass the ball properly was about the 29 minute. Michael Harriman played it to Elliott Hewitt and he played it to Cody McDonald and all of a sudden we started getting moved together and they started to get some belief. I would like to have seen a bit more of that belief at 3 o’clock.

“We got better and we certainly got better by the end of the first half. I felt at half-time that we would show Rotherham more of what we could do.”

The Gills scored three good goals - two after the break - but those were little comfort in the end for Taylor.

He said: “There were some great goals, some good attacking play and some good decisions.

“Again, we scored from a set-piece, which is nice for us and we were unlucky not to score from another long throw.

“There were some very good things but this is such a tough league and you know you are going to get tested every time you play in it. You can’t just do one of the things right. You have to be half-decent attacking but you also need to be half-decent defending.”

Defeat leaves the Gills five points off the League 1 relegation places.