So here we are. First day of the season and anything is possible. Well it would appear that according to the football league we are fairly optimistic about the up coming season. 7th in the fans optimism table and predicting ourselves to a 6th place finish. Here's hoping. UTG
Yesterday at Port Vale, it was a bit of a 'reality check' for the Gills fans. Vale is a club of similar stature as ourselves. They have a couple of decent players. Their overall first 11 appear to have enough ability to make life difficult for teams visiting Vale Park - in much the same way that Gills will have reasonable success at Priestfield - but - like most sides in L1, we may not have enough 'sustained' quality in away matches to achieve automatic promotion. Clearly 'things' went right for us against The Blades - who were not at their best. Gills need to be 'up' for all 46 games if they want to get into the top 2 or 6 places. Different strengths come into the equation for each situation. Yesterday the flurry of bookings in the first half completely changed things. Probably 3 of the bookings were deserved - but the players were affected by them - and the consequence of multiple red cards that could have occurred. Even Justin Edinburgh's decision making was affected - as in the 2nd half, after Egan had to incur a card to stop the progress of a dangerous situation, JE got Ehmer off the bench to start 'warming up'. For a minute I thought that the 'superb' Egan was going to be taken off. Overall, the team performed reasonably well under the threat of the potential for red cards. We even tried to be as positive as possible ( except for Williamson - who didn't break sweat ) - it was a fair performance, and fairly entertaining from a 'fair' team. We mustn't get carried away with the result of the first game of the season.
