Gillingham manager Gareth Ainsworth looks ahead to their final League Two game of the season at home to Shrewsbury Town

Gillingham manager Gareth Ainsworth will want to send the fans home with something to cheer about on Saturday at the end of a challenging season.

The Gills take on Ainsworth’s old team, Shrewsbury Town, at Priestfield, in a match between teams who occupy 18th and 19th places respectively, not where either club expected to be finishing.

Ainsworth is already planning a rebuild and will be keen to finish the League Two campaign on a high. With season tickets now on sale, the club will also hope for a morale-boosting win before the summer break.

“I want to sign off with a win,” Ainsworth said. “I still believe in what I do. I still believe in this team, this ownership, these players.

“It went off like a train [in the opening months]. Obviously, I wasn't in for a period after that [due to a heart operation] and there's been a lot of changes at the clubs. A lot of injuries.

“I'm not going to make excuses here. We haven't been good enough.

“We haven't defended well enough at times. We haven't put the ball in the goal at times. We've tried just to come up short.

“But there's been some positives, although they do seem quite far in the past here. I'm hoping the fans will appreciate that.”

Gillingham’s impressive start to 2025/26 saw them stretch their unbeaten run from the previous season to a club-record 21 games before a sharp decline in form.

Ainsworth said: “It's like a game, isn't it? You always remember the last 10 minutes. You never remember the first 80.

“This season we're always going to remember post-Barrow perhaps, or Crewe, around that time. We got close to the play-offs. We were thinking, ‘Right, we could do it’ and then all of a sudden, we did get a lot of injuries. We did have various things that went against us.

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