Striker Tom Eaves insists the players are hurting too, following another home blow.

The Gills were beaten 2-0 by mid-table Southend United.

“It’s disappointing,” said the 26-year-old striker.

“Any time we get beat it’s disappointing, it is important we let is soak in and reflect on it, on the defeat and what went wrong, we will assess Monday and bounce back because that is all we can do.

“We have to be disappointed. If it doesn’t hurt you then there is something wrong with you, if conceding goals doesn’t hurt you shouldn’t be there. It does hurt but the right reaction is a positive one, we are not going to score by being negative.

“We just have to try and shake it off, get back in the game straight away and deal with the mistakes and look at that afterwards.”

• Read match reaction from manager Steve Lovell

• Injury problems mount up for Gills

The Gills conceded two quickfire goals on Saturday.

Eaves spoke about the way the team respond to conceding, saying: “When we concede there is that body language where people are a bit slumped and we need to shake that off if we are to get back into the game as soon as possible, but when we did, we threw the kitchen sink at them at the end, but it just didn’t go for us.”

Eaves wasn’t short of chances himself.

“I feel really good at the moment,” said the striker, whose goal last week at Portsmouth went viral.

“I got on the ball quite a lot first half and not so much second half. It was disappointing.

“I had a chance second half where I put it just wide, there was a header where I just couldn’t get over the ball, there wasn’t much I could do with that.”

Eaves scored a hat-trick the last time they entertained Southend in a league game, including a penalty, and he felt they should have been awarded one on Saturday when Conor Wilkinson was felled by the keeper.

“That was stone cold one,” he said.

“I thought Conor got to the ball first and he got taken out. I couldn’t believe it.

“We couldn’t gain any momentum because they kept stopping, any time we tried to get any momentum, injured all not, it stopped the game. It is frustrating, you get emotional and you want the referee to do more.

“It made it very difficult because someone would go down and kill the game for a few minutes.

“I looked at the clock with 80 minutes gone and against Fleetwood here last year, we got two late goals, I felt if one of them had gone for us, then who knows?”