Gillingham manager Mark Stimson is facing up to starting the season without last season’s player of the year Simon King.

An ankle injury ended King’s evening early at Bromley as he was carried off on a stretcher.

Stimson said: "I saw his ankle (after the game) and it was huge, so we just have to shut him down for a few days and assess it after that and see how we go.

"It was a bad evening because of it. Their little lad lent into him, King wasn’t expecting it, and he went off balance and over on his ankle. Its an injury he could have picked up anywhere. We seem to be picking up these kinds of injuries in every game we play.

"We’ll get on with it, we have to. If King has half a chance of playing he will play but it’s a long season and what we don’t want to do is take too many gambles early on and put him out for a long period."

King (pictured with physio James Barker) joins Stuart Lewis (ankle), Dennis Oli (knee) and Andy Pugh (groin) on the injury list but Adam Miller has already started running again after his own injury scare.

Stimson said: "He trained on Tuesday afternoon and I think he will be available for the Croydon game (Thursday), although I don’t think I will risk him there.

"We’ll keep him for the weekend, because each game we have, the numbers keep going down and we’re going to need as many fit bodies as we can come the start of the season."

Dennis Oli is also recovering fast but he is likely to miss the season opener.

"Dennis is making decent progress," said Stimson. "He is into resistance work on the knee and that’s a good sign. He has been in the pool and the bikes and the next step will be some form of jogging. By the end of the week we could be up to that so that was some good news we had."

Stuart Lewis was due for a scan on his damaged ankle on Wednesday.

"He’s off the crutches which is a good sign but still a way off training," added Stimson.