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Gillingham welcome an all-star side to Priestfield this Saturday.
Weekend visitors Ipswich Town were relegated from the Championship last season and the Gills boss Steve Evans is confident they’ll make an immediate return.
“They will get promoted to the Championship again,” stated Evans.
“You can’t have 32 outstanding first-team players in the squad and not have enough options.
“They have a fantastic manager in Paul Lambert, a brilliant manager who has experienced another level with Norwich.
“He is getting brilliant support from Marcus Evans (the Ipswich club owner) and you only have to look at the options he has available.
“It will be a real tough test and they will bring big support.
“It is a big test for us but you want to test yourself against the best, I certainly do. Paul Lambert has been in the Premier League for many years and I love coming up against him.
“Paul has used his contacts and his knowledge. We are both Glasgow boys and the difference between me and him is that I had more holes in my shoes than he did! I don’t forget that.”
Ipswich will be heading to Kent with a large following, having sold out their ticket allocation for the match. They sit second in the League 1 table with only a late Coventry winner keeping them off top spot in midweek.
Among the names in their squad is keeper Tomas Holy, who joined them in the summer after turning down the chance to extend his stay at Priestfield.
“He is a top goalkeeper,” said Evans, who compiled a scouting report on Holy before taking over at the Gills. “I gave a fantastic recommendation and he left.”
He’s not the only one Evans is familiar with.
“The front two are exceptional,” he said. “I was at Posh last year and we bid over £1million for Kayden Jackson. He is an outstanding talent and is playing up front with the boy James Norwood, who is a fantastic finisher, so we know it will be tough for us.
“We will perhaps have a different shape than Tuesday, a different system and one or two changes in personnel to make sure we are fresh.”
It’s the second big challenge for the Gills in successive games at home. Last weekend they faced the then-leaders Wycombe and won 2-0.
Evans’ men go into the match four unbeaten so confidence is high.
He said: “I have always said to the players, if we can’t be the league leaders then you want to try and beat the league leaders.
“We are still not getting that rub of the green, we saw that on Tuesday, we saw it at Tranmere when we were 2-0 up and it could have been three or four, Blackpool the same, they got the ski masks on and went away with a point.
“It is a new group, they continue to work hard and they are still impressionable.
“We demand the highest of standards of them every week, and hopefully we will give Ipswich a good account of ourselves but we are not kidding ourselves, we know it will be tough.”
