Gillingham host Steve Evans' Stevenage at Priestfield in League 2 this weekend; he looks ahead to a return and meeting old friends

Steve Evans wasn’t sure if he wanted to manage again after leaving Gillingham but bounces back into town on Saturday with table-topping Stevenage.

Evans left the Gills in January after two and a half years in charge and faced open criticism from his old boss Paul Scally when he’d gone. Evans didn’t bite back at the time and ahead of his first return to Priestfield he’s still not interested in a war of words.

He joined Stevenage at the back end of last season, leading them to safety after taking over a side third bottom in League 2, and after a summer rebuild, his team are heading into the autumn months top of the pile.

“I have never left a football club and got involved in tittle-tattle and I am not going to start now,” said the Scottish boss, who turns 60 later this month.

“Nobody has to tell me about the two top-10 finishes (for Gillingham) or how difficult the last three or four months were, I lived and breathed it, but I am not getting involved in any words against any chairman, we all have hard work and jobs to do, I will just focus on Saturday and doing a job for Stevenage.”

Evans confessed he had no interest in listening to criticism thrown his way from his former boss Scally. The Gills owner had plenty to say about his departed manager in an article published by the club in April.

“I am a practising catholic and do not wish to bad-mouth anyone,” he said. “I don’t think that anyone in this world who follows a faith doesn’t often get it wrong, we do, but the one thing as you get older and wiser, you mature, you have grandchildren around you and it is not healthy to wish ill or think bad of people, but there is nothing that tells me that I don’t want to win any football match when the referee blows that whistle at