Gillingham manager Gareth Ainsworth took the positives from their midweek defeat at Cheltenham Town as they look to play Grimsby Town this Saturday at Priestfield

Gillingham manager Gareth Ainsworth hopes his team can build on their midweek performance at Cheltenham - even though they lost.

The Gills were on top in the opening half, and should have added to Ronan Hale’s opener, but the home side fought back after the break to win 2-1.

If any game summed up Gillingham’s season, this was it. Decent early on but unable to sustain it.

Ainsworth said: “The boys did brilliant, they gave everything but, unfortunately, we’ve not got a result.

“It’s goals. It’s been here for a few years. We’re bringing in players like Ronan to try and address that and score chances.

“I’m gutted and I’m hoping the fans have seen a good performance, that they’re going, ‘Right, yeah, we can build on that’. I certainly have.

“We’ve created enough chances to win two games - and we’ve been guilty of not creating a lot of chances in the past.

“It was great play, sensational stuff. First half, we had loads of chances to put the game to bed and at half-time we should come in 3-0 up, honestly. I’m saying that, probably being generous to Cheltenham.

“But if you don’t take chances, you’re going to get bitten. We did, we got bitten at the end and you can’t afford to miss chances like that.”

The Gills had been hoping to build on a positive run of results, taking four points over the Easter weekend.

Ainsworth had been confident that his team could keep the run going and achieve his target of beating last season’s points tally of 58. Even that’s looking unlikely, now needing to win all three of their remaining games.

“The lads are down, but we’ll get back up,” he predicted.

“We’ve got a big game now at home on Saturday against Grimsby. I’m looking forward to that.

“We've three games to go now. We've got to make sure that