Plans for the Bradford game were thrown when Steven Gregory fell ill on Friday night.

The holding midfielder was due to start for Gills at Valley Parade but was ruled out on the morning of the match and instead watched from the press box.

Boss Peter Taylor had a rethink and asked Amine Linganzi to abandon his attacking instincts and protect the back four.

Taylor said: “I didn’t know (about Gregory) until 10.30am. If all of a sudden it happened to a wide player, you’ve probably got another wide player in the squad.

“But when you’ve got a holding midfielder, the only other option we had there was Callum Davies. He can do that but I’ve never seen him do 90 minutes.

“He’s come on to shore things up for us every now and again, so it wasn’t easy just to go and put Callum in.”

Linganzi’s midfield partner Jake Hessenthaler was substituted at half-time with the youngster feeling the effects of a third game in eight days.

Taylor added: “I thought Jake was a little bit tired. Because he’d just had two fantastic games for us, there was a little bit of me thinking about not starting him here, simply because of James Hanson (Bradford striker) as at times you need two big midfield players in there to block balls into him.”