Martin Allen delivers his verdict on the Gills 1-0 triumph at Valley Parade
Speaking after this afternoon’s record equalling tenth away triumph of the season Martin Allen was full of praise for the team that beat Capital One Cup finalists Bradford 0-1 at Valley Parade, saying, “It’s yet another fantastic away performance and everyone in the team has been absolutely fantastic once again.“There were some outstanding individual performances but with all those supporters at the end it made a great end to what hasn’t been a great week, to be honest. That game on Monday night hit us all hard really so to come up here and win 1-0 is pretty good going.
“It’s a combination of everyone’s efforts, all the staff, all the team and the medical team are well organised. They all know their jobs and we had a different way of playing today, away from home, we tried something different.”
The Gills may have got the job done but Martin revealed that an motorway accident had disrupted his players preparation adding, “There was a crash on the M1 yesterday so we had half an hour with them at Leeds and trained in the dark.
“Adam Barrett has been off all week and he only got passed fit yesterday afternoon at quarter to four. He still isn’t right but that’s the sort of characters we’ve got here. They had one shot in the first half didn’t they?”
“They’ve got dangerous players, both their centre forwards are very good players and their midfield have put themselves up against Premier League players, so let’s not kid ourselves, we had to be right on our game and today, tactically, we got it absolutely spot on.”
Martin chose to mix up his midfield personnel for the trip to Valley Parade and explained the thinking behind the switch, “We changed the team today to add fresh legs, they are fast runners and good athletes.
“We were going to surrender territory to the opposition today, Allen can run, Robinson can run and Whelpdale can run, they did a hell of a lot of running so that Frampton could play in front of the back four.
“Our two forwards had to drop deep to play in between the midfield and their defenders, so we picked players that could run today and I think perhaps we missed that the other night because most good teams can break through defenders and go past people, and all three of the lads did a great job today.”
After cancelling out the Bantams threat in the first half the Gills took the initiative after the interval, Martin continued, “We knew that in the second half gaps would open up and space would happen. There would be chances for us and I think they only had one header in the second half, apart from that they didn’t get anywhere near our goal. That’s testament to the work we all do on the training ground.
“We’ve seen it at Priestfield haven’t we? Other clubs come to our place and defend deep, make it difficult for us to break through and on the counter attack they nick goals off of us. It’s frustrating for the supporters and for myself so our plan today was to do exactly the same here.
“We were the underdogs here for the first time in god knows how long. There was a big crowd, it’s a fantastic stadium and there’s a great buzz around the club, as there should be because they are record breakers. “We came here just to do the job, we knuckled down, everyone stuck to their tasks and you know with McDonald something’s going to happen and how lovely for him to score that goal.”