MARK STIMSON insists now is not the time to get carried away.

Gillingham manager Stimson has seen his side enjoy a happy festive season, taking points off three of League 1’s front runners, but he knows there is plenty more hard work to do.

He said: “We got a fantastic point at Orient and it’s a nice little run, but when you can go five or six games unbeaten that’s when you are on to something.

“This is only halfway and they’ll be more ups and downs.

“Every chairman, with the amount of games left, would say they’ve got a chance of promotion or getting into the play-offs – and that’s why we’ve come here.

“We haven’t come to just sit in mid-table. We’ve come with a massive burning ambition to get into the Championship, and once you are in the Championship you want to be in the Premier League.

“Will it happen this year? Let’s be realistic. What we’ll do is we’ll have a go and you can see that in every game we go into, possibly from the Barnet game onwards, we’ve had a go and that’s all I can ask.

“Have a go, show what you’ve got and once you start getting the ball down like we want you to then you’ll pick up the results.”

Stimson plans to make changes to his side this month, but without the transfer funds given to some of his opponents he knows that to turn things around will take time.

He said: “Unless you’re getting a massive injection of money, which enables you to go and buy four or five players that can guarantee you maximum points every week, then you have to build and that takes time.

“I think we’ve brought some decent players into the squad in the last window and we’ll try and do again this window.”