ANDY Hessenthaler has defended his decision to substitute Guy Ipoua during the 2-0 home defeat against Norwich on Saturday. With the score at 0-0, the Gills boss brought the young striker off mid way through the second half even though he was having, arguably, his best game of the season.

Although they were pleased to see Bob Taylor come on, the home fans believed Marlon King should have been taken off and they made their frustrations clear to the management team.

Hessenthaler explained: "Guy played very well but as the game went on he looked a bit tired. Obviously people were singing for Bob Taylor to come on and at 0-0 he's always likely to get you a goal. Who do you take off - your leading goal scorer or someone who's getting a little bit tired? So we took off Guy, who had a very good game, but Marlon is our leading goal scorer, admittedly a little bit quiet on Saturday but he can nick you a goal."

He added: "In those situations you can't really win with the crowd, but we brought Bob on to try and get us a goal and at the time it was 0-0. We didn't look like scoring and maybe Bob could have opened them up for us."

The Gills created and wasted a number of goalscoring opportunities and were made to pay in the final ten minutes as Iwan Roberts struck twice to give Norwich the three points.

Hessenthaler admitted: "We've had enough of the ball but haven't done enough with it, and we're getting punished for making silly mistakes. This is a sticky patch we are going through, but we don't become a bad side over just a few games, so we've just got to keep our chins up and we'll come through it."

The result leaves Hessenthaler's side in 18th place in the First Division table and with two tricky away games coming up against Wimbledon and Birmingham, confidence is bound to be low at Priestfield.

The Gills manager said: "I don't look at the stats really but we've had a look to compare our season, and at the moment we have more points than we had this time last season. But suddenly everybody's got their chin on the floor for some reason. We've slipped up in the last few games but at the moment we're on course for doing better than we actually did last year.

"We'll keep grinding away and hopefully we'll go to Wimbledon and relax a bit more, create some chances and hopefully take them.

"We've got two difficult away games coming up and perhaps it'll be nice to get away from this place for a while, because the players are a bit tense and look a bit nervous in front of their own fans and we're finding it very hard."