PAUL Scally has revealed that he intends to step down as chairman of Gillingham Football Club within the next four years.

After unveiling a £100,000 deal with Courage, Mr Scally said he still had a number of goals to achieve - including a new stadium - before he quit the post.

But he said that once they were achieved - he would call it a day.

He told the Kent Messenger Group: "I will be chairman until I have taken the club to a new arena, got it financially sound with no debt, with good income streams and profitable, and then I shall leave. And that will be within the next three or four years."

A decision on the new stadium will be made in late January/ early February, he said.

While a site in Gravesham offered the best option so far, he would prefer the club to stay in Medway. He paid tribute to Medway council for "working hard" to find possible alternative sites.

"If there were such sites that gave us the same opportunities that Gravesham gave us, we would obviously explore them," he said. "We would like to stay in Medway if is at all possible."

But it would not be the end of the world if the club had to move. Only 50 per cent of the support came from Medway and just 15 per cent from Gillingham, he said.

"I'm not hung up on this must-stay-in-Gillingham, must-stay-in-Medway concept because it's not that important.

"We will make the decision on where we're going probably by the end of January or early February. We will pin down our preferred site by then."

By then, he hoped the club, languishing second from bottom in the Championship, had started to win more matches. "No-one likes losing. I take losing very badly. I will quit football when I quit football because I don't like losing and the pressure's too great."

The club was doing what it could to improve the situation. But the £6.2m losses incurred from the collapse of ITV Digital, the money was just not available.

As for more new players, he said the club was looking all the time. "We are all about winning games. Everything we do is about trying to generate funds to pay for better players, to get a better team, to win more matches."

He was "totally confident" that things would be turned round. But he would not be "slitting his wrists" if the club were relegated.

"If next season we are still in the championship, that's great but if we're not, we're still in the Football League.

"There are still 30 or 40 clubs below us that are worse off than us, and we'll just deal with it, it's not life threatening, it's not the end of the world.

"It's not what we want, not what were about, not what were striving for, but I won't be slitting my wrists if we get relegated."