Gillingham suffered an early injury blow on Tuesday night - one which hurt.

Manager Mark Bonner was already without seven senior players for the match against Newport County and had to replace George Lapslie with 20 minutes played.

Lapslie went down a couple of times in the early stages of the game before eventually being replaced by Jonny Williams. Even while struggling with the injury he played a great ball through to Jayden Clarke which the winger was unable to put away.

Speaking straight after Tuesday’s game, Bonner said: “He did try to carry on and it didn't look great as soon as he had it. I don't actually know what he'd done. Maybe something in his ankle.

“That was a big loss for us because I thought in the first five, ten minutes, he looked very good, really energetic, excellent forward runs and looked like he was going to be a big one for us.

“It was a big loss when he came off. But in terms of what it is and how long it will be, I have no idea.”

Bonner could now be missing Lapslie for their weekend trip to Swindon and he’s not expecting any of the seven injured players to be back either.

Glenn Morris, Amani Little, Robbie McKenzie, Aaron Rowe, Bradley Dack, Elliott Nevitt and Josh Andrews are all currently absent.

Injuries have certainly had an impact so far.

“Yeah, it looks like it is,” admitted the Gills manager. “It's pretty obvious, really.

“We've not really landed on a consistent team this year at all. So, if you ask me what the best team is, I don't think anybody knows because we haven't really seen it.

“Any time that we have got something going, there's been a little problem and things like that.

“That's just the stage that we're in. What you hope is you can get some results in those periods and we did that great in the early part (of the season).

“We're really struggling with that at the moment and trying to hang onto the coattails of the teams in that top six, seven positions while we're going through it so that we are, when everyone's back, in contention.

“Obviously, the last few weeks has really made us fall away a little bit from certainly the top ones but I do think the top ones are the top ones and I don't really think we're in that bracket yet.

“We've got to try and hang on to the teams that are fighting for the top six position while we're waiting for lads to get back.

“I do think we probably shouldn't have lost the game at Bradford because of the goals that we conceded. We shouldn't have lost the game against Accrington and we shouldn't have lost that game (against Newport) but we have.

“The skill is trying to get some points through this period because it gets harder the longer the run goes on and people get emotional and lose spirit and all those sorts of things. That's the challenge to try and keep together and keep trying to grind out a way of finding some results.”

Left-back Max Clark is set to miss the weekend trip to Swindon after picking up what was his fifth booking of the season.