by Luke Cawdell

Gillingham boss Andy Hessenthaler admitted the team’s display against Burton wasn’t good on the eye but he wasn’t too concerned.

The Gills won the game by a single goal, scored by Cody McDonald early in the second half, but Hessenthaler know there is plenty to sharpen up.

“Sometimes you have to win ugly and that’s what we did,” he said.

“It wasn’t good in the first half as there was no real tempo about our game. They started better than us. They are a strong side and for me we got sucked into a bit of a long ball game a bit and we didn’t play enough football.

“I felt sorry for the two guys up front (McDonald and Akinfenwa) because they were feeding off scraps. Looking at the stats we only got the ball into Akinfenwa once in the first half. That was right near the end of it and we nearly scored from it. Second half we got it into him 10 times. It’s because we tried to shorten the game up. It had been passing people by in midfield and it wasn’t good.

“We made a slight adjustment second half by narrowing up in midfield and getting Jack Payne free on the football to try and shorten it up a little bit. It worked and we did pass the ball a bit better in the second half.

“We know we can do better but it’s about points at the end of the day. We had to grind one out and we got it.”

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