Crawley Town 0 Gillingham 1: Manager Neil Harris’ reaction as an own-goal settles League 2 match

Manager Neil Harris admitted his Gillingham team were poor on Saturday as they edged to victory at Crawley.

An own-goal won them the game as their hosts had a first-half penalty saved and failed to make the most of their overall dominance.

The Gills have now won all four of their opening League 2 games by the same 1-0 scoreline, a first for any club in the Football League.

More: Crawley 0-1 Gillingham

Harris celebrated with the 1,300 travelling fans at the end but then acknowledged that his side had rode their luck.

“We were really poor,” he admitted. “We were excellent at Stockport, where we might not have deserved to win but deserved a point. We got three.

“Against Accrington we dominated and should have won by more, at Sutton we deserved to win the game because we defended brilliantly, we gave next to nothing away and we scored a good goal.

“Then today (Saturday) we turned the ball over so cheaply, the shape at times was wrong, there was loads of good stuff but I have to be honest and maybe we got something we didn’t deserve, with the three points.

“I thought Crawley had really good patterns, they dominated the ball, we knew it would be a game of transitions and we would have to counter well and first half after the penalty save we transitioned really well and could have been two or three up, but then second half every time we won the ball, we gave it away.

“I said to the lads, ‘four wins out of four, brilliant, but we can’t be turning balls over like that against good football teams’.

“I have young lads in the (dressing room) and I said, ‘look at the senior lads, talk to the boys that have played at the top level and played in the Premier League and the Championship, when you turn the ball over against better