Salford City v Gillingham preview: Gills’ head coach Stephen Clemence taking on former Birmingham City team-mate and current Ammies chief executive Nicky Butt this Saturday

Gillingham’s head coach Stephen Clemence says the friendships will be on hold at Salford as his men look to maintain their play-off push.

Clemence knows the Salford head coach Karl Robinson well and the club’s recently appointed first team coach Alex Bruce is the son of Steve - who for over a decade he worked alongside. Steve Bruce is the father-in-law of Salford’s leading goalscorer Matt Smith.

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The Gills head coach also played alongside Salford’s chief executive officer Nicky Butt at Birmingham City. Butt’s part of the “class of 92” alongside Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, the Neville brothers and Paul Scholes who purchased Salford City in 2014.

But for Clemence, all of that will be put aside when his team turn up at the Peninsula Stadium for Saturday’s League 2 encounter.

He said: “There are a number of people I know at the football club and I look forward to seeing them but looking forward to taking them on as well. We are going up there to come back with a positive result.

“Maybe there will be a beer after the game - but there won’t be a tea before. It will be full focus on the game. We are going up there to win, it is not about who your mates are, once you cross over that white line it is about winning football matches, it doesn’t matter who it is against.

“They are a completely different side to the one we played (in mid-November) when I first arrived at the club, they play very differently. Karl (who was appointed in early January) has had one defeat in 10 games. They have big Matt Smith up front and they use him a lot, they get bodies around him, we know we have to be bang at it.

“There will be a lot of duels going on and we will have to stay with runners, there