Gills chairman Paul Scally insists that whoever comes in to replace Andy Hessenthaler will have an ample budget to compete at the top of League 2.

The Gills went over budget during the last campaign, meaning next season’s resources could be less but Mr Scally (pictured) believes that even on a reduced amount, the new manager will have a sizeable amount of money at his disposal.

He said: "It might be less (but) it will be very competitive and if I was a manager coming in, I would be quite excited coming here."

Hessenthaler, who lost the manager’s job last week, built an impressive squad for League 2 and the chairman doesn’t believe too much re-building needs doing.

He added: "We will be adding two or three to the squad but I don’t think the squad is far short of being a very good squad and one capable of achieving promotion but then I thought that last year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

"We will look back at games like Northampton away and AFC Wimbledon at home and Bradford away and all these games where we dropped two points or three and if one of those games had gone slightly the other way then we would have been in the play-offs I’m sure.

"I think if we had got in there we would have been the stronger side. The sad thing about the business that Hessy is in, is that if you don’t achieve it, then you get the sack.

"If you don’t achieve the same things at a double glazing company, you wouldn’t get the sack."