Gillingham 1 Coventry 2

GILLINGHAM’S player-manager Andy Hessenthaler criticised the way his team conceded two sloppy goals against Coventry on Saturday but believes his players can take heart from the way they battled in the second half.

Hessenthaler said: "Perhaps we showed Coventry too much respect at the start, I don't know? The two goals we gave away came from poor defending and we cannot afford to do that, but full credit to the players for the way they played in the second half.

"We rolled our sleeves up, showed a bit of pride, and had a go to see if we could get ourselves back into the game.

"Maybe if we had scored earlier and if Iffy's header had gone in instead of hitting the bar for 1-1 then maybe it would have been different but in truth I'm not sure we deserved to get anything."

He added: "I needed to have a few words at half time but I didn't rant and rave because that's not my style, the players already knew they were down on their performance levels. Defensively as a team we were poor. We weren't at the races in the first half and we gave ourselves a mountain to climb at half time."

"We have a long break now where we can recharge the batteries. Our team spirit here is good and we are off to La Manga to get a bit of sun, train and prepare for the Southampton game."

Coventry cannot be proud of the way they played after Jairo Martinez and Youssef Chippo gave them a first half lead. Play acting and time wasting after they had been reduced to 10 men 20 minutes into the second half wound up an already frustrated Gillingham side.

But the home side have to shoulder some of the blame as they failed to make good use of their dominant possession until Paul Shaw scored in injury time.

Despite a valiant attempt to earn a point in the dying minutes Gillingham were left ruing missed chances.

Hessenthaler singled out Nyron Nosworthy for praise after the youngster deputised at the last minute for Mark Patterson down the right: "He did well as he has been out injured for a couple of weeks and has only played one reserve game this season. I think Nayron can take a lot from his performance."

Coventry's caretaker boss Roland Nilsson said: "We knew Gillingham would come at us in the second half to try and get back into the game and we knew if we could hold them early we'd be all right. I think we did that then suddenly we are down to ten men when Youssef Safri gets sent off. I couldn't believe the referee sent him off.

"He played on and suddenly the linesman started waving his flag, it wasn't a vicious tackle of any sort and it should only have been a free kick."