Gillingham boss Steve Evans was critical of his players last weekend but admitted his own faults, too.

His side found themselves 3-0 down at half-time against Oxford.

Evans started the game with wing-backs but switched to a flat-back four in the second half, while also making a double substitution.

Evans said: “You look back and think, ‘did we get the shape wrong, the system wrong, one or two of the personnel wrong?’.

"Yes, and we will take the criticism.

“We take the criticism as a management team. You have to be honest with yourself before you can be honest to your group.

“We are not blameless as a management team and I said that to the players at half-time and at the end of the game (and) when we met on Monday.

"We got some things wrong, but we still need a real desire and commitment to work hard.

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• We were all over the place
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“We have been poor other times but there has not been another time where three or four of them were a notch below it and that has a big knock-on effect on the rest.

“There are some players who had been performing really well. I think if you look at Mark Byrne and Alfie Jones they were equally as bad as anyone on the park in the first half but they had a bit of steel second half and got themselves sorted.

“After a half-time telling off they were back to normal and nobody could get past them. While it was more defensive than attacking-minded, it was solid in the second half.

"We did a containment job and tried to nick a goal, but we had to stop the flow of traffic.”

Evans was in contact with his Oxford counterpart Karl Robinson the day after.

The Gills boss said: “We messaged each other and he thought the difference between the first and the second half, in terms of organisation, shape, discipline and willingness to work hard, was remarkable.”

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