Gillingham manager Mark Bonner on the importance of analysis and challenging his coaching staff on their methods

Gillingham boss Mark Bonner wants his players to challenge their coaching team throughout the season.

Bonner is big on analysis and holds daily meetings with the squad as he looks to drip-feed his methods since joining the club in May.

After a busy opening week which saw the Gills play three times, they had more hours on the training ground this week ahead of this Saturday’s trip to Fleetwood in League 2.

But the classroom work will continue throughout the campaign, and Bonner welcomes feedback from his players.

“We show a lot of video, we do a lot of unit meetings, we do a lot of individual feedback, all the coaches have got groups of players that they look after to give individual work to,” said Bonner.

“We’re all responsible for different units of the team as well and we do a lot of team meetings.

“We meet every day and show little doses of information, whether that’s things we think we can work on, things we can target at the weekend, things we need to do better.

“I think little and often is really important, we’ve got all the facilities to use touch screens and highlight bits and pieces. We’re quite confident and comfortable talking to the players.

“In a big group it’s hard to get feedback sometimes from them but they’re getting right involved and giving pointers and information, being involved in the meeting rather than just being spoken to and being spoken at.

“The best ones for that are when you get individual and unit meetings and the group is smaller, I think players feel more empowered to have opinions and we want it as well.

“We really want their feedback, we don’t mind being challenged as coaches as well if they think there’s something we should be doing different, better, more of, this is a two-way street