SCHOFIELD: "THE LADS ARE IN GREAT SHAPE"

Assistant Manager pleased with pre-season progress

John Schofield has praised the players for returning to the club in such great shape.


The squad are in their second week of pre-season training and their camp now contains three new players with Amine Linganzi, Antonio German and Adebayo Akinfenwa on board, and the Assistant Manager says all three will have an important role to play.


Speaking during his midweek press conference he said:


“It’s no secret that we have got a good recipe the way we play, the way we try and do things and it’s now a question of improving the ingredients we have got for it.


“Bayo fits in to that category – it’s a great signing for us and we identify the players who we think are going to improve the squad.


“A big thank you to Mr. Scally for backing us and trusting our judgment in bringing in Amine Linganzi, Antonio German and now Bayo.


“Antonio is our player, he fits in with our regime, he joins in as he did last year on loan and it’s our job to continue getting the performances out of him that he showed last year.


“We’ve got Keds, Birchy and Westy who can play up there so it’s exciting and any two of the five we have is an exciting combination.


“We’ve got a mixture of power, strength, pace, movement, fox in the box – we have everything so there are a lot of opportunities to adjust what we do and win games.”


John refused to rule out the possibility of more signings coming in, and said the management are very happy with the way pre-season is progressing.


He added: “We are constantly looking, we have got Amine in who will strengthen the midfield and we are always on the lookout to improve but we also have some young development players who are fighting for places so they are all looking good and giving us food for thought aswell.


“The lads have come back looking in tremendous shape, we asked them to come back in decent condition and we are looking to take things on to another level now.


“Eighty per cent of our work is with a ball anyway so technically we are improving them. We try and involve the ball as much as possible and all the players at this football club have played 45 minutes and 40 minutes because we had two games on Saturday and a game yesterday.


“We are quite happy with the way things are progressing, we have a session on Friday and two games Saturday.


“We have a game at the training ground which kicks off at 11 o’clock so fans can come and watch us and then in the afternoon we are playing at Bromley so there will be loads of football for us this weekend and this steps us on to another level.


“The other opponents [the 11 o’clock fixture] is a team run by Jamie Lawrence that he is bringing from the centre of London.


"It will be a competitive game and he puts together a good side, it will be a good test and it’s about getting minutes under our belt before we depart for Le Touquet next week.”


To watch John’s interview in full, log on to Gills Player here.


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