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Gillingham won Saturday’s match from the penalty spot but it was fully deserved said their manager Steve Evans.
Evans - watching from the stands due to a one-game touchline ban - was able to see his side score early and concede before coming on strong late in the game to clinch the points.
Following the 2-1 win, Evans said: “We deserved to win the game, we commanded lots of it and it was possibly our best performance, a step up from Lincoln.
“We got a fantastic start with a great strike by the best player on the park (Mustapha Carayol) by some distance, then we gave a sloppy goal away, a silly goal, there were a number of errors, we gave the ball away cheap and their boy gets across the edge of our box, he turns and shoots, the keeper should save it, Jamie knows it.
“There were a lot of good performances, people running on empty last 10 minutes, people like Ryan Jackson, Robbie McKenzie, Dan Adshead coming in for a game, Muzzy Carayol, running on empty, but they got in the trenches and they fought for us.”
Gillingham might have been running on empty but they had too much for Morecambe as the game progressed.
Evans said: “I sat beside the chairman and I said, ‘we will score here, we will score because we were dominating territorially’ and as soon as I put Muzzy wide and with (substitute) Danny Lloyd’s energy, he has a few faults but lots of big pluses for me, I think he re-energised them when we were sapping a little bit.
“We got the penalty and the winner and the credit to the boys is that Morecambe are a good side, not just a good manager but an excellent one and they are well organised and disciplined with good players but they never created an opportunity in that second half, infact they didn’t create many all afternoon.”
With just one defeat from the first four league games Evans is pleased with the return, particularly after a tough summer.
He said: “I said to the boys before the match firstly it was about performance, if we performed to a level I thought we would win the game, but ultimately football is about winning, it is a results business.
“I said to them, come in with the three points and it now becomes a good start. We have drawn with Lincoln who we really respect, we have beaten Morecambe, drawn with Wimbledon and lost in the 80th minute to Plymouth, that’s a good start for me. Better than last year!”
Evans added: “Robbie McKenzie shouldn’t play, Jackson shouldn’t play, Ben Reeves shouldn’t, Carayol shouldn’t start, they are not ready, but when you are in the trenches you fight and you ask the lads to go in and battle with you, they have done that, I hugged every one of them. I was proud of them.”
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