Justin Edinburgh hopes some of the negativity around Priestfield will disappear now Gillingham are back on top of League 1.

The Gills, who suffered cup defeats to Stevenage and Yeovil in their previous two outings, got back to winning ways with a 3-1 victory over Bury on Saturday.

“I think there was a bit of a black cloud,” said Gills manager Edinburgh.

“I understand it and I don’t want to keep addressing it but I spoke (to the squad) about last Saturday and moved on. I got the attitude back and got what we were looking for on Tuesday.

“With 17 games in we are top of the league and I don’t want people to lose realism or sight of what we are trying to do here.

“What we are trying to do is get those kind of performances week in, week out. It is my job to manage expectations of everyone at this club and the crowd, but this is something we can enjoy and we can move on.

“We are six games from the halfway mark now and baring a disaster we are going to be in that top five or six. That is a phenomenal achievement for this young group.”

With Gillingham maintaining their position as one of League 1’s promotion-chasing teams, Edinburgh is well on target to secure at least two of chairman Paul Scally’s targets.

Edinburgh said: “My first target, what the chairman asked, was to secure our status in League 1. We are a long way towards doing that.

“His second was could we make the play-offs? Right now we are in a good position to do that but there is a long way to go.

“The third was could we gain automatic promotion? We are certainly in (with a chance of) the latter one because we are top but we won’t get carried away."