Gillingham manager Steve Lovell remained upbeat despite losing to League 1’s bottom side.

The Gills came alive late in the game on Saturday, but by then the damage was already done.

Bury’s 2-1 win was a fourth league defeat for Lovell in the 23 games he has taken charge of.

Lovell was particularly frustrated by his team’s first-half showing, but said: “The lads have done absolutely brilliantly and I am not going to get carried away with one 45 minutes of football, not at all.

“All I will do is take the plusses out of our second-half performance and try to get that to start next week in the first half.”

Gillingham remained 11th in the League 1 table after the defeat, 10 points clear of the relegation zone and seven adrift of the play-offs.

Lovell said: “It was disappointing, really, after the good run we have had but all good runs come to an end and we now have to dust ourselves down.

“The boys have done brilliant, all of them, we have had a really good run. We are disappointed not to have won the game, but we’ll go and work hard ready for next week.”

Gillingham switched formations midway through the first half in an effort to turn the tide, abandoning their original 3-5-2 set-up.

“You make changes and they either happen or they don’t,” Lovell said.

“I never look back and think, ‘oh I wish I hadn’t done that’, I will make decisions which I feel are right. Some will come off, some won’t.

“I am the manager and that is what you do, you make decisions, if they work great and if they don’t then I will try again and change it. It was a matter of changing things. They were on top and we had to change things up. We did that.”

Gillingham did get into the game more after the break, pushing for an equaliser late on and they had penalty claims when Ben Nugent went over in the box.

“We either get them or we don’t,” added Lovell. “Nothing happened and it’s not a penalty.

“If the boys think it was a penalty then perhaps it was. I don’t talk about them, the referee made a decision and it’s gone.”