Gillingham FC Forum

There is a friendly arranged with Ebbsfleet at our ground in Stonebrdge Road, Northfleet on Tuesday evening (8th Jan) with a 730 kick off.

Entry is £5 and all Gills fans are welcome.

Thanks Alan. Good job fans give announcements with such little news coming out from the club! Strange to have an evening one though as most friendlies during the season now happen during weekday afternoons. Is it in aid of anything in particular?

Oh its us vs Gravesend. Ok cool.

Garawa wrote:Thanks Alan. Good job fans give announcements with such little news coming out from the club! Strange to have an evening one though as most friendlies during the season now happen during weekday afternoons. Is it in aid of anything in particular?

Just a case of match practice I believe - we dont run a reserve team so fringe players dont always get much game time and we are also trying to strengthen the squad during the transfer window, so it will be a case of looking at one or two potential recruits as well.

Same with us. The reserve games often got postponed and there was months between games so we organise impromptu matches now whenever we feel we need to play one (and can pick any side as well). Trouble is we only seem to know about them when a match report makes it onto the website shortly after it finishes!

Finished 5-0 to Ebbsfleet in front of a crowd of 156. Ebbsfleet played mainly 1st teamers with 2 or 3 triallists and I understand the Gills team was a Development squad with no 1st teamers involved. For the most art though, I'd say I hope no 1st teamers get injured if you need to rely on these players as back up as your team barely managed a shot on goal all evening and were poor defensively.

I think there is very little reliance really. Sounds like we failed to utilise any of the 26 or so first team players that have given us an immensely powerful league position. My experience of these games this season is that they are generally a mix of kids and trialists and we haven't signed 1 trialist yet this season even on short contracts. So given that they will have never played together at all 5-0 is probably about right.

I'm slightly interested in why the Official Site has yet to put up a report on the game ..... they usually do regardless of the score , although the defeats aren't normally to a non-league side .

Garawa wrote:I think there is very little reliance really. Sounds like we failed to utilise any of the 26 or so first team players that have given us an immensely powerful league position. My experience of these games this season is that they are generally a mix of kids and trialists and we haven't signed 1 trialist yet this season even on short contracts. So given that they will have never played together at all 5-0 is probably about right.

Fair enough - wasnt criticising as your squad is clearly having a really good season in the league with promotion a real possibility and I wish you all the best with that - I had no idea as to the make up of the Gills squad last night & it was only what I heard from fellow Fleet fans that indicated no 1st teamers were involved in your team.

No worries, that's you and me both as the official website still isn't mentioning the game even happened let alone who played!!!

As we have no way of knowing of how the team looked I can only guess by the games that have been reported on and I can't this as any different. And with Martin Allen's squad rotation during league games, this would have been even more. I reckon this would have been a Mark Patterson development squad of kids and trialists, maybe eyeing up a couple for a January move. Who knows.

All the best to Ebbsfleet this season, hopefully you can avoid the drop and maybe finish above Dartford this season!!!!