Gillingham boss Mark Bonner remains upbeat despite FA Cup exit extending winless run to seven matches

Gillingham manager Mark Bonner saw plenty in their FA Cup defeat to know brighter days are just around the corner.

The Gills held their own against League 1 Blackpool, whose finishing in front of goal ultimately proved the difference between the sides at Priestfield.

Bonner’s men are unlikely to come up against many sides with that quality in League 2.

It means it’s now seven games without a win but Bonner doesn’t have that negative given where Blackpool are on their journey under new boss Steve Bruce.

“Everybody else feels it’s another one but we shouldn’t expect to be better than them or to beat them because they’re miles ahead of us,” explained Bonner.

“We’re a middle of League 2 team trying to chase to be a promotion-chasing play-off team, and they are, I think, a play-off chasing team in League 1 with bags of quality in their team.

“That creates your expectation, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat them, you can’t compete with them as we have definitely competed with them and actually we should have taken a better result out of that game.

“I’m not sure it makes it worse because of the run (of poor form), it just makes it worse because we’re out of the cup. We didn’t play like we were stressed in the game at all, last week at Swindon we played stressed, we played free (on Saturday).

“The skill is taking that into next week. The edge and the atmosphere in training this week has been very good, the work in training has been very good, the players have had meetings and we’ve had meetings where we’ve talked about that but it can’t last three days. That has to last consistently all the time and you have to do the right things on the horrible days when you feel a bit sorry for yourself – and it’s easy to.

“But that won’t get us