Gillingham manager Mark Bonner knows the best way to answer the critics.

His Gills team came under fire last time out as supporters vented their frustration following a home defeat to Harrogate. A busy December, with six games, gives them ample chance to get back in the promotion hunt.

They head to Bromley tomorrow (Wednesday) looking to banish the memories of being booed off last time out.

Bonner said: “The only place you can ever prove yourself is in your performances and with the results. That's how that works.

“We finished that game looking defeated and deflated, out of ideas and out of energy.

“You can never accept that as a player, as a coach, as a manager, as a supporter at all.

“[I have] absolutely no problem with people venting frustrations.

“I also believe - just as a bit of a football fan myself - that if I buy a ticket to go and watch the team, in my head, my psychology is I'm 100% for my team until the final whistle blows and if at full-time I'm not very happy with it, then I have every right to say it.

“But throughout the game, you need people with you the whole time. I think it's fine when it is like that at full-time.

“If it's ever unfair, I'll always probably bite back a little bit. I always try to be really honest with the feedback, and I often get credited for being honest until people don't like the things that I say. But you can't have it all ways.

“Sometimes I'll say things that people agree with, disagree with, do like, don't like. In the end, none of the talking stuff really matters.

“The consistency as a team has got to improve because we've been up and down a little bit too much.

“We almost turned a corner with a couple of good performances, chipped away with some points and a good couple of performances against Blackpool (in the FA Cup) and Stevenage (in the EFL Trophy), a win against Port Vale and then you think, ‘right, okay, we're turning the corner.’

“All of a sudden, now the talk isn't about a decent few weeks where we started to turn the page a little bit. It's just how long the run's gone on, how many defeats it is in a certain amount, or how many wins it is in a certain amount of time. You can't change the narrative in that moment. You can only change it with what you do next.

“We've had some good meetings where there's been real honesty with everybody and the boys have worked really hard.

“Hopefully, in the next few weeks, we can find the formula that gives us a real good run going into January.

“The dressing room does really care. The problem is if you have spells in games where it doesn't look like that, but these players really care. They want to do well, they want to win, they work hard. Sometimes it doesn't reflect itself on the pitch in the way that we are.

“There was a period in the second half (against Harrogate) where it didn't look like that at all. You can't have that because then people can throw that (criticism) at you.

“But you should be really angry when people question your integrity, or your honesty, as a professional in this job because no-one works as hard as us to try and do it.”