New Gillingham forward Marcus Wyllie was close to making his league debut last weekend.

After impressing Gills boss Mark Bonner in training, Wyllie had been earmarked to have an impact at Fleetwood last Saturday.

But the way the game panned out meant Bonner decided to introduce other players from the bench.

Gillingham had plenty of options to choose from with attacking players Aaron Rowe, Joe Gbode, Jonny Williams and George Lapslie all coming on.

“That’s the strength and these boys will see that all the time,” explained Bonner.

“I thought some (in the team) under-performed last week and some under-performed this week.

“I hope the competition keeps improving, we need more players back, we need the ones that are out coming back and driving the standard because if we want to be a top team we’ve got to drive to be better - as simple as that.

“We can be pleased with where we are at the moment but I just know that in order to sustain that when teams are getting better, we’ll have to improve ourselves - and we will.

“I do like the options that came on, we’ve got a bit of everything and one or two haven’t had a sniff yet.

“Marcus Wyllie hasn’t had a sniff yet. He’s trained brilliantly this week and we thought he’d be one for this game. We just felt we needed as much physicality, pace and power on the pitch as we could get for a spell while we went George Lapslie, Aaron Rowe, Joe Gbode.

“Then obviously towards the end, we wanted to try and get someone to link the game and keep the ball for us and Jonny Williams had a good impact when he came on as well.

“All it gives us is different options, we can start differently and finish differently. I think we have done and that will only continue.”

Wyllie joined the Gills in July from non-league Enfield Town after a prolific season when he netted 34 times to help his team win promotion via the Isthmian Premier play-offs.