Gillingham boss Neil Harris was taking the positives from a game which was made much harder for them after the opposition changed their manager.
Winless opponents Hartlepool United had a new man at the helm in Keith Curle and that changed the dynamics of a fixture between two clubs trying to avoid the bottom two places in League 2.
Saturday’s match ended goalless and Harris was just disappointed that his team didn’t have the cutting edge to make their better moves pay off. Gillingham were unable to test the home keeper throughout the 90 minutes.
Harris said: “The day was made lot harder for us with a new manager coming in. I had seen some games earlier on in the season of Hartlepool and they struggled but this time they were a completely different outfit. It was always going to make it a lot more difficult.
“First half I thought we handled it really well, the only threat they looked like having was when we turned the ball over cheaply, other than that we got into some great areas and played some good football at times. Ultimately we should have been infront at half-time.
“Second half was a lot more even, the wind got up a bit and we struggled to get out, without giving bundles away, but when you are not on the front-foot second half and when the opponent does rally you need to make sure you don’t concede, our keeper made a couple of good saves and Will Wright made a great tackle.
"I expected my keeper to make a couple of saves and my centre-halves to throw themselves infront of the ball, when I look back at the stats and watch the game back we were getting into better areas than Hartlepool did but they looked more threatening with the end product than we did at times.
“We just have to be better with the ball in the final
Read more on kentonline.co.uk
kentonline.co.uk
