Gillingham boss Mark Bonner was named League 2 manager-of-the-month in August and nominated for the September award but hasn’t picked up a point in October
05:00, 25 October 2024
Gillingham manager Mark Bonner’s keen to find the middle ground after seeing their results dip dramatically in the month of October.
Bonner quipped that he’d gone from ‘manager-of-the-month to monster-of-the-month’ after five straight defeats but knows good teams don’t become bad teams in such a short space of time.
Bonner’s side head into the weekend sitting 11th in the table - having started the month top.
But he said: “We can see in some of the data and in some of the performances we can hold on to a little bit of hope that actually, despite having a lot of players missing that would probably contribute, we're really in games and we should be taking something from a couple of those.
“Anyone can beat anyone (in the league). We can beat anyone but anyone can beat us and a run of consecutive bad results means you can drop places quite quickly, but the reverse is also true.
“When we were in a really good position in the league, I wasn't a genius and we weren't a complete team, and now that we've slipped to 11th and we're on a run of defeats, I'm not hopeless and neither is the team.
“The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
“All you can do is play the next game and try to be as close to your best level as possible. We have to hang on to the teams that are in those (top) positions we want to be in while we get the team stronger and everything else and not feel sorry for ourselves.
League 2 table
“We don't want to be a streaky team, like I said the other night. You can't be a team that in the first month of the season, manager-of-the-month, which basically means the team's been really successful.
“Nominated for manager-of-the-month in month two (September), which means you've had a really good month, and then monster-of-the-month in the third and has to leave the club because the team's hopeless all of a sudden!
“None of those are true, and the run of results is stupid, but we have to find some middle ground and work out getting a positive result and then building from there.”
The Gills have won as many as they’ve lost, with six wins, one draw and six defeats in their 13 league games but ended a run of three straight victories with that flurry of defeats this month.
Bonner said: “Usually the noise gets loudest around the team, and outside the team, and even in the team when you are doing really, really well or really badly in terms of runs of results, and so managing that is really important.
“Part of when we were doing really well in results was consistently saying to people ‘the level we're playing at will not allow us to stay at the level we're at’. I've said that loads to the team and it was just true. We were probably outperforming ourselves a bit and got a few points that we might not have done.
“In some of the games that we played recently it's the same sort of story.
“There's actually quite a bit in there that's alright and we're not far away from getting results, and then there's bits in there that need calling out as hopeless, and we've got to sort that out and solve.
“There's loads of reasons for it, so it's trying to work those bits out, keep people calm enough that it isn't chaos but focused enough that it's serious and this can't continue.
“It's trying to find that balance all the time and everyone's in a slightly different place in the team. But we've had a couple of really good meetings. I think the lads are focused. I think they're with us. I think they're desperate to do well and one or two things have really gone against us in a few games.
“They're probably the things that went for us when we were going well. We have to level off a little bit and be a bit more of a consistent team because streaky teams are horrible teams to be part of.”
