Steve Evans wasn’t sure if he wanted to manage again after leaving Gillingham but bounces back into town on Saturday with table-topping Stevenage.

Evans left the Gills in January after two and a half years in charge and faced open criticism from his old chairman Paul Scally when he’d gone. Evans didn’t bite back at the time and, ahead of his first return to Priestfield, he’s still not interested in a war of words.

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He joined Stevenage at the back end of last season, leading them to safety after taking over a side third bottom in League 2 and, after a summer rebuild, his team are now top of the pile.

“I have never left a football club and got involved in tittle-tattle and I am not going to start now,” said the Scottish boss, who turns 60 later this month.

“Nobody has to tell me about the two top-10 finishes (for Gillingham) or how difficult the last three or four months were, I lived and breathed it, but I am not getting involved in any words against any chairman. We all have hard work and jobs to do, I will just focus on Saturday and doing a job for Stevenage.”

Evans confessed he had no interest in listening to criticism thrown his way from his former boss Scally. The Gills owner had plenty to say about his departed manager in an article published by the club in April.

“I am a practising catholic and do not wish to bad-mouth anyone,” said Evans. “I don’t think that anyone in this world who follows a faith doesn’t often get it wrong, we do, but the one thing as you get older and wiser, you mature, you have grandchildren around you and it is not healthy to wish ill or think bad of people. But there is nothing that tells me that I don’t want to win any football match when the referee blows that whistle at 3pm.”

The former boss left the Gills in January with the club struggling in the face of a lengthy injury list and with transfer restrictions making life tough after the club agreed to take an EFL loan to help boost the coffers following the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said: “Some days we got to Beechings Cross (the training ground) and there were six or seven players, they would be looking at me and thinking, ‘what are we going to do?' Should we play three-a-side to prepare to play Oxford on the Saturday?’

“I know that I gave the Gillingham supporters everything I could, late in the day it became very apparent that the job was like trying to climb Everest in your trainers.”

Evans admitted he wasn’t looking for a new job after leaving Gillingham.

He said: “When I came out of Gillingham - I don’t hide it - I wasn’t in a great place, I didn’t know if I was going to go back into football, but I went back in.

“A couple of men didn’t persuade me to go back in but the chairman at Stevenage, Phil Wallace, asked to meet me, I was hesitant but I met him and over a couple of meetings I wanted to go back in and have that love for it.

“I am not here to knock anything about Gillingham, I said at the weekend, the supporters will always be close to my heart. I have never hidden my love and affinity for all the clubs I have been at.

“You have a girlfriend and you fall in love, all managers are the same. Does Jurgen Klopp still have a fondness for Dortmund in his heart? Yes he does, I know he does, he told me. Does Pep Guardiola absolutely adore and love everything about Barcelona? I spent time with Pep while doing my pro licence and I know his love for the club, he is now in love with Manchester City and the project he has got.

“I just want to keep away from words. Back in the day when I left Gillingham I told people to not tell me what was being said, people were desperate for me to speak, but I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to hear it, I could guess.

“I just kept my dignity and if it’s appropriate and I have the opportunity I will certainly applaud the Rainham End and the Gillingham fans briefly (on Saturday) but they know I am there to do a job and I want to win.

“I will applaud them, it will be coming from inside me, I was saddened to see them get relegated to League 2. I was glad when they got Neil Harris in, what happened before then was strange to me, but when he went in (taking over on the final day of the transfer window) I thought they would have a go, which they did.

“He has got his own players now and sometimes when you put a new group together it takes a bit of time but I look at the quality of player like Mika Mandron, Stuart O’Keefe, Alex MacDonald, Ben Reeves, Max Ehmer, Elkan Baggott, I could keep going with the players they have got and I have nothing but respect for the boys that Neil has got there.

“Neil is a top manager, a Championship manager plying his trade in League 2.”

Evans didn’t need to go back into football. His family are financially secure, more so through property dealings than football. He is a proud grandfather who speaks often about his love for his children.

But he was never going to be away from the game for long.

“It is just inside you and you love it,” he said.

“Myself and (assistant) Paul Raynor have a good track record and I am loving the challenge at Stevenage. We are so far ahead of where we thought we would be, it is staggering, that is credit to the players.”

It’s a team with some recognisable faces for the Gills fans.

Former loanee Jordan Roberts bagged two goals last weekend in a 2-0 win over Swindon Town, a result that took them top of League 2.

Big striker Luke Norris, now 29, played for two seasons at the Gills at an early stage of his career, scoring 14 goals in 38 league starts. He will be raring to go again after having the weekend off, Evans allowing him some extra time to recover from a broken nose.

“Medically he was clear to play (last Saturday) and he trained,” Evans said. “I had him in the starting team, but I saw him arrive for the game with his partner and baby and I just thought it was not right for someone who broke their nose three days earlier to then be asked to go in and be physical with central defenders and have a battle up, so we left him out.

“We had a practice match on Tuesday and he scored a wonderful goal and Luke will be available for selection at Gills. Jordan Roberts is doing really well. He has played in different positions, he was one of our best players at Gillingham during a great run which we had and I was elated when I got him to Stevenage.”

Elliott List - Gills’ former winger - won’t be involved, however, as he is recovering from an early-season injury. He may just be back for the reverse fixture between the teams on New Year’s Day.

It was Evans who agreed to List’s sale to Stevenage from Gills in 2019 but he’s delighted to be working with the pacey forward again.

Evans said: “We sold Listy (while at Gillingham) at a time when the club needed money, but Elliott without a shadow of a doubt went away and did what I asked him to do, which was to drop a level and get his head down and work hard, work on his assets.

“I went to Stevenage and found a much improved player. I take no credit. The coaching staff inbetween him leaving Gills and me going to Stevenage, they reinvented Elliott as an out-and-out striker with pace. It is fair to say that at the end of last season he was unplayable in the games when I went in, he is a huge loss to us but he is working hard to get back.”

List and Norris were crucial in helping Stevenage stay up last season. Evans lost his first two games in charge but the wins soon started to come.

“We had a huge game at home to Oldham and we absolutely dominated from start to finish, but lost 1-0,” Evans recalled. “It was really sad on the Monday.

"There was obviously going to be different staffing ratios in the National League to the Football League, there were staff almost in tears, fearing they would lose their jobs, so if ever I or the coaching staff or players needed motivation to turn around those last eight games, that was it. In the end we stayed up easy.”

During Evans’ summer rebuild, he looked at a couple of former Gills players, Harvey Lintott and Gerald Sithole. They went to Northampton and Bolton, respectively, but were well thought of by the Stevenage boss, having used players to fill the spaces in his paper-thin squad last season.

Turning the fortunes at Stevenage around has been an impressive effort.

“It has been remarkable,” he said. “Not just from me, I take pride, but it is remarkable from everyone at the club. The training ground is fantastic, the infrastructure is really good, what that gives you is a chance. When you don’t have an infrastructure you have very little chance to be successful over a period of time.

“I may fail at Stevenage but I will never be able to look at a lack of support from above and a lack of infrastructure because it is there, every day, every day we get asked 'how can we improve?' Improve the training ground, the equipment, that comes from our leader.”

Evans will be glad to see some familiar faces this weekend, although it won’t be his first return to the town.

“I had some wonderful days at Priestfield and I have been a regular visitor in and around Gillingham town since the day I left,” he said. “I have got some really good friends who are massive Gills fans and I never knew these people before I went to become Gills boss, they are now lifetime friends.”

Gills’ current boss Neil Harris has said this is just another game. Likewise for Evans.

“It is our next game and every point that you get in this league has to be earned,” he said.

“Every point is tough to get, let alone three, Gillingham will know that from their game at Crewe last weekend. I have watched Tuesday’s game (against Colchester) and the one at Crewe, I think they should have won at Crewe, they have scored in the last four games. Neil has had to put up with light numbers, injuries, various factors, we are going to Priestfield against a team in a good place.

“There are people there who I have not had the chance to actually shake hands with, or give a hug to, friends like Gary Hemens (the physio), James Russell (fitness coach) and some of the players, Alex MacDonald, Stuart O’Keefe. They are good human beings, never mind good footballers. It will be nice to see them but we don’t forget we are there to win a football match and nobody needs to tell me how tough it is to go to Priestfield, I know.”

And on the reception he expects to receive? He said: “People will choose to do what they want to do. I will applaud the Gillingham supporters, not a big gesture, but then we focus on trying to do our jobs, it is just another game.

“When I meet up with my friends from Gillingham - which I will do on Saturday - they also talk about the good times I had there, how it nearly was and we just didn’t have enough.

“When I retire from football I will remember Connor Ogilvie scoring in the last minute at the Rainham End and Mika Mandron away at Sunderland. Someone said to me at the time, ‘you must be fed up beating Sunderland?!’ How can you ever be fed up with beating an oil-tanker like Sunderland? You can’t. I will always think of those times.”