Peter Taylor was happy with the way his side handled the pressure on Tuesday night.

Conference Premier Dover put on a good performance against the Gills and ran out 1-0 winners with a goal from Sean Raggett.

The result didn’t go Gills’ way but Taylor did take heart from certain aspects of the game.

He said: “It was a very good test and probably the best friendly that we have had for us to cope with the division we are in.

“To me, Dover started very well and put us under a lot of pressure. We had to improve and we had to handle it and I think in both halves we did handle it and improve.

“Maybe had we scored on one of the two very good chances we had we might have gone onto win the match.”

Just like Ipswich on Saturday, Dover made life difficult for the Gills by pressing them on the ball.

“We had a little excuse (against Ipswich) because of the heat and the pitch was a little bit sticky,” said Taylor.

“Dover put us under good pressure, they were very organised to get the ball off us and at times we didn’t have the patience to pass but after about 20 minutes we got better.

“We started handling it and started causing them problems and we had a bit more of the ball. I was okay with that and we then recovered.

“There will be times this season when that happens, where our passing game isn’t right and you have to keep grafting away and then you have to slowly and surely get your passing game right.”

Taylor admits there were times when his team weren’t patient enough on Tuesday.

“I think we went a little bit too direct because of the pressure we were under,” he said.

“The way to take pressure off yourself is to try and keep it a bit more but only in the right areas, you can’t do it all the time, there are times you have to chip it into spaces. I think after 25 minutes of the first half we started to then keep the ball a little better.”