Manager Neil Harris led the praise for Gillingham match-winner Shaun Williams.

The midfielder has taken the captain’s arm-band in the absence of Stuart O’Keefe, and like others who have been with the Gills since before the influx of new talent, has seen his game improve.

• Goalkeeper's top performance against his old team

Harris said: “People like him and Alex MacDonald are quality players, top players over a long period of time, and maybe we haven’t seen their qualities on the pitch regularly enough this year, that comes from defeatism, from where we have been at and maybe the support around them.

“It is no coincidence that we are seeing top performances again from those sorts of players.”

Williams was a summer signing for the Gills following his season with Portsmouth and before that six and a half years at Millwall. He’s amassed over 400 league appearances in his career and was keen to work with his old Millwall boss Neil Harris again at Gillingham.

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Looking back at that summer move, Harris said: “I had to consider how we wanted to play and the age, Shaun Williams was 35 in the summer, he had a lot of clubs after him in this division and the league above as well in league 1.

“My relationship with him is strong and when the opportunity came to sign him I wanted to take it, it didn’t need a lot of convincing but I had to convince him to come to us at a club where I knew in the summer we were going to have one of the smallest budgets in the division and that we might struggle.

"I told him straight, he knew what he was coming into and he still chose to come and play for me.”

Williams got the only goal of the game on Saturday - his first for the Gills and his first since December 2019 when he scored the opener in a 2-2 draw against Nottingham Forest. The other man on the scoresheet that night, bagging a stoppage-time equaliser, was Aiden O’Brien - one of the new men now at Gills.

“He should have been off the mark on a few occasions,” said Harris, recalling Williams' previous chances for the Gills. “He has hit the bar and missed two absolute sitters from set-plays, I am pleased for him to get off the mark.”

O’Brien - a deadline day signing on loan from Shrewsbury - came off the bench for his Gills debut on Saturday.

*Gillingham's young left-back Bailey Akehurst has joined Isthmian League Premier Division side Cray Wanderers on loan, making his debut on Saturday in a 1-0 defeat against Wingate & Finchley.