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Paul Raynor says it’s taken longer than anticipated to get Gillingham firing this season as they prepare to welcome Accrington.
The Gills are 19th going into Saturday’s League 1 game at Priestfield, five points worse off than their 11th-placed visitors.
They’re keen to get moving up the table as soon as possible.
Assistant boss Raynor said: “We said when we came in, we’re going to try and stabilise the team and not talk about relegation and that’s what we intend to do this year.
“But we need to get cracking very soon because we don’t want to be sitting below the middle of the table at this time of the season.
“We need some wins, we’ll get some wins and we’ll get going but it’s taken a little bit longer than we anticipated this year.”
Gillingham are gearing up for a ding-dong battle, on and off the pitch, against Accrington.
Stanley may not be one of the big-boys in League 1 but John Coleman’s side possess qualities admired greatly by the Gills management.
“I know it will be one of our toughest games of the season,” said Raynor. “Because one thing that John and Jimmy (Bell, assistant) do is they’re very demanding.
“They work incredibly hard, their recruitment’s very good, they pluck players from all over the place, I don’t know where they see them sometimes and they pop up there but they’re brilliant at what they do.
“We get on really well with them, we know it’s going to be a scrap and a fight on the touchline on Saturday, we know it’s going to be a fight and a scrap on the pitch because that’s the way we both play, but we’ve got a lot of respect for them.”
Gillingham look set to make changes after their midweek defeat by West Ham under-21s in the EFL Trophy.
Expect those who impressed in the 2-2 draw at Bolton, the likes of John Akinde, to return to the side, as Gills look to mix it with Accrington.
“You know what you get with Accrington, we’ve been adversaries for many years with John and Jimmy," said Raynor.
“They’re aggressive, they’re on the front foot, they put it on you and they’ve got some real quality as well so we know exactly what to expect from them, they’ll know exactly what to expect from us.
“It certainly won’t be a flat performance on Saturday because we’ll demand a lot more from our boys than we gave on Tuesday and that’s the disappointment for those guys that were telling us they were chomping on the bit for a chance but they’ve not grasped that chance.”
