Gillingham defender Jack Tucker is ignoring the speculation regarding his own future at the club.

The 22-year-old has been regularly linked with a move away from Priestfield since establishing himself in the Gills team under former boss Steve Evans.

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Those rumours persist as the deadline for making permanent deals approaches. The January transfer window closes on Monday.

Tucker, who like most of the current Gills squad will be out of contract in the summer, said: “It has been thrown around online but I don’t read too much into it, I am still a Gillingham player and until I am not I will still go out there and give 100% on the pitch and do what I am told.

“I am contracted here and as far as I am seeing it I am playing here until the end of the season and will do all I can to help the team out and get us out the bottom four.”

He’s currently involved in a relegation battle at the bottom of League 1. Gillingham haven’t enjoyed a victory in three months, there is no permanent manager in place and they have just broken an unwanted record of 16 games without a win.

But Tucker has been with the Gills for 14 years and he’s up for the battle.

“I am not one to give up on anything,” he said. “The boys need me and I need them, we will stick together and do what we can and work hard and whatever happens happens and, hopefully, we can do enough.

“We’ve got 19 games to go, 57 points to play for, there are a lot of games left, a lot of points left, it is not ideal where we are but we are by no means out of it, we still believe in the changing room that we have got every chance of staying out of it.

“We are where we are, there is nothing we can do to affect the first 25 games or whatever, we need to concentrate on the next 19 and do what we can to give the fans something to cheer about and get us out of this mess.”

• Gills lack quality against Shrews

Gillingham missed a big chance for maximum points on Tuesday against a lethargic Shrewsbury side. They had the possession and more of the chances but failed to capitalise in a game that ended goalless.

Tucker reflected on the positives, saying: “It was a decent performance and we looked solid throughout defensively, didn’t feel like we would concede at any point which was a positive having conceded three in the last couple, that’s a positive and the clean sheet is a bonus.

“I don’t think we created as many chances as we should have going forward, we lacked that bit of quality in the final third but we still had a couple of chances. It wasn’t a bad performance to build on and something we can take positives from to take into Saturday.”