Gillingham manager Mark Bonner will be looking at his players to show “professionalism and pride” when they return to action on Sunday.

It’s been a tough few weeks for the Gills, losing three games on the spin without scoring a goal. They couldn’t even hit the target from the penalty spot on Thursday night.

The busy festive period comes to an end on Sunday when the Gills head to Chesterfield.

“It’s a really tough one,” said under-fire manager Bonner, looking ahead to the next challenge.

“Picking everyone up will be hard (after Thursday night’s 3-0 loss to Bromley) but there's an element of individual players and teams having professionalism and pride to go and deliver the performances you need.”

Bonner has been switching his players around with so many games in a short space of time. Key players such as Armani Little have only just recovered from injury and he doesn’t want to over-play them.

It was why he felt he had to make so many changes for the last fixture.

Conor Masterson is out with a hamstring strain and Aaron Rowe was missing with a knee injury. Bradley Dack was left out for the Bromley game due to fitness concerns.

Bonner said: “Conor will be out for a bit, Aaron has a chance for Chesterfield and Dacky will be good to go.

“This is just the reality of it at the moment with some of the players we’ve got.

“After this period the games thin out a bit, you play less games and if we can shrink the squad, balance the squad a bit better, get some more athletic players to help and get a little bit of an energy around the team.”

The Gills are halfway through their league campaign, sitting 14th in the table, losing 11 of their opening 23 games.

It’s not promotion form, not where they were expected to be, but Bonner’s not lost hope of achieving what they set out to do, which is win promotion.

Despite the poor form, the Gills are only seven points away from the play-off places.

He was asked if he still felt confident of a top seven finish and replied: “I've seen teams getting in last year that were further away from it than we are so yes but not like we are now.

“We're just a long way from where we want to be so lots to do.”

Chesterfield are 10th in the table and experiencing a tough run of results themselves, also losing their last three fixtures .

The Gills beat them 1-0 at the end of August thanks to an early Robbie McKenzie goal, a result that at the time kept Bonner’s men top of the pile and helped clinch a manager-of-the-month award, a positive start that continued into September but has since nosedived.