Gillingham boss Mark Bonner was named League 2 manager-of-the-month in August and nominated for the September award but hasn’t picked up a point in October

Gillingham manager Mark Bonner’s keen to find the middle ground after seeing their results dip dramatically in the month of October.

Bonner quipped that he’d gone from ‘manager-of-the-month to monster-of-the-month’ after five straight defeats but knows good teams don’t become bad teams in such a short space of time.

Bonner’s side head into the weekend sitting 11th in the table - having started the month top.

But he said: “We can see in some of the data and in some of the performances we can hold on to a little bit of hope that actually, despite having a lot of players missing that would probably contribute, we're really in games and we should be taking something from a couple of those.

“Anyone can beat anyone (in the league). We can beat anyone but anyone can beat us and a run of consecutive bad results means you can drop places quite quickly, but the reverse is also true.

“When we were in a really good position in the league, I wasn't a genius and we weren't a complete team, and now that we've slipped to 11th and we're on a run of defeats, I'm not hopeless and neither is the team.

“The truth is always somewhere in the middle.

“All you can do is play the next game and try to be as close to your best level as possible. We have to hang on to the teams that are in those (top) positions we want to be in while we get the team stronger and everything else and not feel sorry for ourselves.

League 2 table

“We don't want to be a streaky team, like I said the other night. You can't be a team that in the first month of the season, manager-of-the-month, which basically means the team's been really successful.

“Nominated for manager-of-the-month in month two (September), which means you've had a really good month, and then