GILLINGHAM player-manager Andy Hessenthaler has criticised the automatic £5,000 FA fine the club has picked up following six bookings against Burnley.

Steve Banks, Ian Cox, John Hills, Iwan Roberts, Darren Byfield and Hessenthaler himself were all cautioned. But the manager said: “It’s scandalous as there was not a dirty tackle in the whole game.

“When people see there were eight yellow and two red cards in total, they think it had been a dirty game, but that wasn’t the case. It was the referee being far too picky.

“It’s laughable when a referee feels he needs to throw yellow cards around in such a carefree manner, but we must get on with it.

“We cannot go into games thinking we must not get booked and we must play safe because that will affect our game.

“I think the fine is very harsh - not that we could have spent the money on the playing side of things.”

Hessenthaler then fired a friendly warning to his players and said: “We will have to be more careful in future or we might start taking it out of players’ wages.”

This weekend, while his players use the international break to re-charge, Hessenthaler will be watching Darius Henderson, who he has loaned to League 1 side Swindon Town.

Henderson, who is 23 tomorrow (Tuesday), has scored four goals in three games and Hessenthaler said: “It’s been good for him as it’s raised his confidence and fitness levels and we will benefit from that when he returns next week.”

Hessenthaler had more praise for strikers, namely his two summer signings Roberts and Byfield, who both got on the scoresheet again last Monday.

He said: “If you look at the games we have won, both have scored.

“It’s a slight worry that we have yet to keep a clean sheet, but I felt we were unlucky against Ipswich and especially QPR.

“Stoke is the only game we never looked like getting anything out of. But at the start of the season if you’d said we’d have nine points from the first month I would have taken it.

“I’m happy that we’re sitting in the top half of the table a month in.

“Now we’re going to use this time off to re-group ahead of the Sunderland home game on September 11 and if we can get nine points a month we’ll be all right.”