Welcome to my new column which will be featured in the Medway Messenger every week. I’ve taken over the reigns from Simon King this season and I’m under a bit of pressure to perform as I know that Kingy was a fans’ favourite. I’ll try my best to keep you up to date with what’s been happening over the past seven days at the club. Please let me know what you think and do send in any questions which you have for me about Gillingham or football in general to jnutter@thekmgroup.co.uk

We’ve been looking forward to the start of this season from the minute we beat Shrewsbury in the play-off final at Wembley.

We’ve got a nice start at home and hopefully those fans who backed us at Wembley can come back and show their support again.

We’ve got to try and remember what a buzz it was to win that game and keep that in the back of our minds because if you win games, you go to places like Wembley.

It’s been a long summer for me and there hasn’t been much of a break.

It seemed that most of last season was spent on overnight stays on those long away trips and I was sharing a room with Millsy (Adam Miller).

I just couldn’t get rid of him, though, as we ended up in hospital together in the summer having hernia operations!

We had to then go through rehabilitation together and we’re both now fit and ready to attack League 1.

The manager has put together a young and energetic team. I’m 27 but that was only my second full season last year.

Many of us are still quite inexperienced and for Curts (Curtis Weston) I think that was his first full season. That inexperience could be an advantage to us as we go into games without fearing anyone or anything.

Swindon will give us a good game on Saturday and they recently signed a lad from Leeds, Jonathon Douglas, who I know well. He was here at Gillingham for a while and I was in the same youth team as him at Blackburn.

He was unlucky at Blackburn as when Graeme Souness left, it killed his chances as the new gaffer (Mark Hughes) didn’t fancy him and he’s ended up at Swindon.

You have to take things like that on the chin as a player as some managers just won’t fancy you.

When you find the right person they can really bring the best out in you and someone like Curtis has found that in the current gaffer here.

We welcomed another new arrival to the club this week when Jacob Erskine joined.

I remember when he came on at Bromley, he gave us a hard time and he’s not a bad player.

The manager here is not bad at polishing rough diamonds and so he’s got a chance if he gets his head down and works hard. The gaffer does bring out the best in people and he treats everyone on face value and that’s great because it gives everyone a fair chance. Jacob has certainly found the right man to get that opportunity.

There has been a lot of talk about our injury situation and we have been unlucky but for others it’s a great opportunity.

It’s gutting for those who are going to be missing but I’m sure they will come back stronger and knowing them, they will be back sooner than everyone thinks. Everyone in the squad believes they are capable of playing in the first team – we all believe in our ability – so it’s not as though we haven’t got people that can step in.

I’m going to have to get used to playing alongside someone else in defence now and it looks like it’s going to be Josh Gowling. I built up a decent relationship with Simon King, he did the aggressive bit and I tried to play a bit.

He is a tremendous player and will be a huge loss but hopefully Josh can come in and perform.