Gillingham have signed towering defender Ben Nugent ahead of this weekend's trip to MK Dons.

Nugent, 24, is a former Cardiff City player who spent the last two seasons with Crewe Alexandra.

Pennock had been short of defensive options and bolsters his squad with the addition of 6ft 4inch defender Nugent, who played 12 games for Cardiff in the season they won the Championship league title. He was named young player-of-the-year that season.

He had loans at Brentford, Peterborough and Yeovil before joining Crewe at the start of the 2015/16 season. Nugent played 59 games over two seasons but left the club at the end of last season, nursing an injury.

Now back to full fitness, he appeared for Gillingham in a behind closed doors in-house game on Tuesday.

Nugent said: "I spoke to the manager a couple of weeks ago and he invited me in to come and train and thankfully he liked what he saw and I'm glad to have signed."

Pennock added: "I'm very pleased to get Ben on board, he provides good competition in the centre of defence.

"We're a little bit short on centre-backs and with Ben it's a case of he does what it says on the tin.

"He's a winner, he's played a lot of games in the league and he's the type of character we need."