We've had a busy summer and signed some exciting players and looking at our midfield it’s going to scare the life out of the opposition.

The pace and the ability in there is unbelievable and we have competition for places, which is what you need.

We just need to get off to a good start now with a win against Cheltenham.

There are going to be ups and downs, which is always the case, especially with Gillingham but the fans have seen the new signings we’ve made and there is a good feeling around the Medway Towns. We get the impression that there is a vibrant feeling about the place.

I was involved a lot with agents on the phone over the summer, along with meetings with the management and the chairman and we did our business in-house. If you look at the players we have got in, it seems to have paid off.

What was gutting was to see Adam Birchall, a friend of mine, get injured shortly after joining us.

When I was at Dover we got on well and on away trips we roomed together. He was looking forward to getting back into the pro game and it’s a setback for him.

He will, I’m sure, come back stronger and hopefully with his rehab, he can come back earlier than we first thought. He might just be the tonic we need at the end of the season.

Unfortunately, when you play football you are going to expect injuries. We’ve seen the footage of the injury and can’t believe the damage which he has done. Physio Steve Allen went to watch the surgery and said it was amazing. Thankfully it went really well.

Pre-season is now over and we have had a lot of games. The reason for that is because we wanted to try and get players match-fit instead of training ground-fit.

If you look at the way we’ve played, especially for 70 minutes against Peterborough, our fitness levels were far superior to them and we were the better team.

We’ve faced good teams at home and I am glad we’ve been playing that kind of opposition. There’s no point playing teams you beat 6-0 every week, you need to be tested.

We are pleased with the way pre-season has gone and all looking forward to the start of the season.

Our most recent signing has been young Argentinean goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga – surely the first ever Argentine on the books at Gillingham.

He speaks Spanish and I can stretch to "si si" so he’s been coming in every day with a phrasebook and we try to tell him the basics, like "keeper" and "push out" and little things like that.

He is a bubbly character and as a player a rough diamond. His distribution with the ball is second to none. You look at Premiership keepers like Pepe Reina at Liverpool and he kicks as good as him. He is one for the future.

We know he may not be a starter just yet. We’ll be looking to try and bring in a goalkeeper coach to try and improve him along with Daren Hawkes and Ross Flitney.

My knee injury has yet to be resolved which meant I haven’t been involved on the pitch in pre-season, until Tuesday.

We took a trip to Bly Spartans to officially open their floodlights and I managed 90 minutes (pictured above), with the manager also seeing some action.

We are keen to turn out for any team in Kent. We’ve played a lot of local sides during pre-season and hopefully we’ve helped them out with the crowds.