Gillingham boss Steve Evans is grateful for the support shown to his team during his most testing time at the club.

Injuries left Evans without some of his top players for over a month and that coincided with a poor run of results, losing their last five in League 1 and slipping into the drop zone. They are now five points adrift.

The recent postponements due to Covid have done the Gills a favour in terms of getting their injured players back fit and delaying at least a couple of those games until when they have more options. The game against Charlton tomorrow (Wednesday) is the third off in a row.

Evans said: “The fans have been supportive to me and the players. They have stuck with us and they have not got on the players’ backs and kept it positive.

“The Gillingham supporters know their football and they know if we are missing eight or nine players who would start to help us win, they know how tough it would be, particularly this season in a tough League 1.

“The fortunate thing is that other teams have found it difficult too. We are very much capable of stringing three or four wins together and we would then bounce up to the bottom half of mid-table.

“Our supporters will know very soon when we line up, they will start to see a team, and say ‘that is better, that is our team’ and they are no different to me and the players in the dressing room.

“Every one of our players quite rightfully believes they should be in the best XI. We need the opportunity to have more options rather than plucking kids from the academy and it has been proven what I said six weeks ago, they are not ready.

“They will be ready in time but they are not yet ready. We wouldn’t expect them to be ready. It has been a massive learning curve but you don’t want it to go from a learning curve to a bad experience and that is why we need our experienced and bigger players back because we need to be able to keep this kids around us and make it a good experience for them towards the end of the season, not painful and hurtful.”

Gillingham are next in action on New Year's Day with a game at MK Dons.