Gills boss Martin Allen will pick many young players at Burton on Saturday

by Luke Cawdell

Martin Allen hopes the fans travelling to Burton get right behind his young players on Saturday.

The Gills boss will hand three teenagers their Football League debuts and will name just two players who started last week against AFC Wimbledon.

Gillingham will be backed by 1,400 fans at Burton and Allen hopes all of them, including one who wrote to him this week, give them the support they need.

Allen said: “I opened my mail and had a lovely letter from a supporter, all nicely typed out and he said ‘please, please, please, it is so disappointing that you are going to change the team for Burton’ and he said he would not be going.

“He left a mobile number so I called him. ‘Hello, good morning, Martin Allen, Gillingham FC’. I asked him if he has ever seen any of these players. He said ‘no’.

Young Callum Davies will play in central defence alongside Andy Frampton

“I have worked with these players and seen them play and I this is my judgement. I will do what is best for Gillingham FC. We are within the Football League rules and I have okayed it with my chairman and talked to my staff about it.

“I have wanted to play these players for a while. They will be competitive and hungry and will do everything they can to play well.

“So I for one think we have a good team. The gentleman apologised and I asked him and I ask everyone going to Burton to get behind the players. Those who are not playing or are injured will be travelling to the game and we, together, will invade Burton and we will win. We have got some good young ones.

“Those players work so hard and I wanted to reward them. I have got the youngest bench and three of them will be going on and I can’t wait.

“The best thing about them is that they are like our first team. They have attitude, they are strong, they have desire and passion and all those things have been over-flowing from our team all season.

“Our (first) team are probably in sun-bed mode and we want players who are hungry. In training they were smashing people and getting into people and they were having it. We want the same on Saturday and that’s why we have picked the team we have.”