Gillingham’s early promise faded against Crewe and it’s something the head coach knows they need to work on - as the visitors stopped them playing.

Connor Mahoney and Remeao Hutton were a massive threat down the Gills’ right flank early on but Crewe soon sussed it out and Friday’s game eventually ended in a goalless draw.

Report: Gillingham 0-0 Crewe

Head coach Stephen Clemence admits his team need to find different ways of hurting teams after previous visitors Grimsby Town did a similar trick in another frustrating home draw.

Clemence said: “I don’t think we played quite as well as we can do, we started the game really well, Remeao and Connor were linking up really nicely but Crewe changed slightly what they were doing, they went and stood on Huts to make it harder for him to get the ball and us to get started.

“That happened to us in the Grimsby game as well and when these things happen and people try and stop what you’re doing, you have to find another way, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find it in these couple of home games.

“We will keep working on it, we’ll look at it as a coaching staff, to try and give the boys different ideas when it does get blocked up on that right-hand side.”

An early Mahoney cross gave Tim Dieng a headed chance that forced visiting keeper Tom Booth to make an excellent save and in the second half Josh Andrews also made the goalie stretch to tip the ball over. They were Gills’ best opportunities of the game.

“It was a fair result,” Clemence conceded. “Two evenly matched teams at the right end of the table and both now in the play-off places.

“They have some good players and so have we, they probably had one good chance which Glenn (Morris, the Gills keeper) made a good save from [to deny Elliott Nevitt at the near post] and I think we had a couple of headers.

“They came here and respected us, they tried to stop what we were doing and they did a good job of it, I can see by being on the sideline why they are in the top seven.

“Their manager was very respectful to me after the game, and said he thinks we have a really good team and that we have good threats going forward. I think we showed that at the start of the game, but unfortunately we didn't take one of those chances and then to be fair to Crewe they came back into the game.

“We would have liked one of those balls into the box at the end to fall more kindly for us and maybe we scramble a goal over the line but I think 0-0 is a fair result.”

Gillingham didn’t get much help from the officials and when asked about an early penalty appeal for handball, Clemence said: “I don’t think we got a lot given to us if I am honest. I don’t like moaning about refs, but I think the fans felt that a well, that can sometimes happen and it was one of those games.

“I felt a lot of free-kicks were going the other way and not ours, which was frustrating, and I also felt four minutes of injury-time (at the end of the game) didn’t feel like much when all of those subs had been made and there was a bit of time being wasted, but what can I do about it now? There is no point moaning about it.

“It was a tough game, we take the point, we’re onto 60 now and we look forward to the game against Harrogate (on Monday).”