Gillingham’s inability to get the basics right on Sunday left caretaker boss Peter Taylor frustrated.

The Gills were beaten 1-0 at home to Portsmouth.

While insisting that there were big refereeing decisions which went against his side, wrongly according to Taylor, he addressed their inefficiencies first.

He said: “In patches there were some good things but there were also some disappointing things, a lot of basic things where the players made their jobs harder, by not doing the basic things well.

“You are going to have enough problems when you play a good team anyway. At times we caused ourselves more.

Report: Gillingham 0 Portsmouth 1

“I am not critical of their effort, their effort was fine, absolutely fine, but at times they have to learn the trade a bit more.

“I see things where we give fouls away and the opponents are facing the wrong way. They are not going to go anywhere and you give them a foul. Where you should just stay still and they play the ball back, we give a foul and we have to defend another free-kick. Little things like that, we are giving ourselves more work than we need to.”

The Gills conceded within 30 seconds of the second half restarting.

“It was disappointing that it’s from our kick-off,” Taylor said.

“They win the header, they go down and score. Tomas Holy (the keeper) did everything he could to stop the ball; it’s hit the upright and gone across. It was a very disappointing start to the second half.”

The Gills were denied a penalty in the first half, when Sean Clare was tripped in the box, and had a goal ruled out for offside when Josh Parker headed in.

On the penalty decision, Taylor said: “From where I was standing it looked like it could have been a penalty, I’ve see them given and seen them not given.

“If the referee wasn’t sure he has to give the decision that he thinks is right.

"I thought that was a touch harsh because we had a fella running towards goal and we think he was brought down. He is not going to fall down is he? Not from that position, he is going to take a shot.”

And on the Parker effort being scrubbed off.

“We don’t think it was offside,” he said.

“We were very unlucky. It doesn’t seem to happen the other end to us.”