Andy Hessenthaler makes his point to the officials Picture: Barry Goodwin

by Luke Cawdell

Andy Hessenthaler was left to rue the defensive mistakes that proved costly once again.

After successive 4-3 defeats Gillingham failed to keep it tight again as they conceded twice against Southend.

Hessenthaler said: "It was poor defending in the first half and for the first goal, Lewis Montrose lost the ball in the middle of the park.

"Their right-back has played a ball in and to be fair to Matty Lawrence he has held his hands up and said, 'I haven't narrowed up on Ferdinand' and he's had a free header.

"Matty knows what he has to do, but we are making mistakes and these shouldn't happen."

The Gills found themselves 1-0 down after just 10 minutes.

Hessenthaler continued: "It's not easy when you are on a bad run as you don't want to concede early on. That's what we did.

"We didn't pass the ball in the first half and we got roped into the way they played, very direct and very physical, and they did it well.

"The second goal might have been offside, Sky Sports are saying it's not. It didn't look like offside but when the ball went across the player might have been offside then. But I am not hiding behind referees. I think it came off Joe Martin in the end - he's scored a few own goals recently.

"We made changes at half time and put young Jack Payne on to give us a bit of penetration up and down. He was a risk, he had done just one day's training and we never thought he was going to be involved. He came in, he didn't feel bad and he came through a training session.

"We brought him on and tried to get the ball down and pass it a bit more. We did great in the second half but they (Southend) sat in there and made it difficult for us. We had a lot of the ball but just didn't work their keeper enough in the second half."

Hessenthaler introduced teenagers Connor Essam and Jack Evans in the second half, while fellow teen Paulo Gazzaniga made his first league start for the club.

"The biggest positive for me was the kids," said the Gills boss. "Paulo was terrific and pulled off one great save. He couldn't do much with the goals and then didn't have much to do. Jack Evans came on at right-back and young Connor also came on and did great. The positives for me were the boys who came on."

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