The players are hurting too, says Gillingham’s former Welsh international Jonny Williams after the team’s losing run was extended to five games on Tuesday night.

The Gills suffered a 2-0 home defeat to Newport County, a result that dropped them to 11th in League 2. They started the month top of the pile but have had a dreadful run of results.

Williams, in his second season with the Gills, says the players have discussed the current issues amongst themselves and believe that sticking together is the way forward.

He’ll be hoping a trip to his former club Swindon this Saturday will be the match which ends their poor form.

“The dressing room is just really down and frustrated at the moment,” said Williams.

“We started the season really well, as we did last year, and the one thing about last year was consistency. That’s something we thought had clicked this year; unfortunately, we’ve been inconsistent again.

“It’s down to us as players to sort that out and there’s probably no better way to do it than on Saturday going to Swindon.

“It hurts us as players. I’m speaking on behalf of everyone. It’s a real down dressing room. We’ll come in Thursday (today) and we have to pick ourselves up and believe we can win and beat Swindon.

“I believe in us as a squad. We haven’t just got bad overnight. We showed at the start of the season we can be a really good team. It’s down to us to be positive, even in the tough times.

“It’s easy when it’s all going well and everyone’s patting you on the back. It’s now about the strength of character to dig in and show up.

“We have to keep believing, keep the confidence in the squad. We can’t shy away from anything now.

“If we win Saturday we can go back in the top seven, it’s a really tight league.

“Thankfully we’ve already got a lot of points on the board. It’s up to us now as a group, and as a club, to stick together and not get on each other’s backs and pull ourselves through this patch. We can go on a run because we’ve shown we can.

“I’ve been in dressing rooms that have had tough patches and we’ve come through the other side. You stick together as a group, you remain confident and positive, you keep trying to do your best and eventually things will turn and that will go for us.

“We’ve just got to keep doing what we believe in, keep trusting in what we’re doing, keep creating chances and it will change. I do thoroughly believe that and we can’t do anything else but do our best and be positive.”

Williams played 84 games for Swindon, scoring 15 goals and 10 assists, helping them into the play-offs in the 2021/22 season where they lost the semi-final.

He opted to leave the County Ground after his two-year deal came to an end, with offers on the table elsewhere, eventually joining the Gills after they made a late bid to clinch his signature ahead of Bradford City.

Williams said: “I enjoyed my football there. They play a possession-based game. We have to counter-attack that and play to our strengths and see if we can get a result on Saturday.

“We have to end the run at some point and as a group that really hurts us. We want to achieve something with this football club so we do feel the pain. We’ve had a discussion amongst ourselves as players and we need to be better as a group.

“It’s only down to us, the ones that are fit of course. We’ve got a lot of players missing. The ones that are fit have to go and put the badge on and give their all and see where they end up.

“I’m going to enjoy it. We won there last year, it was a great away day. We won 1-0, could have been two.

“I’m looking forward to going there and hopefully ending our run of bad defeats.”