After his side’s horror show at Barrow last weekend, Gillingham boss John Coleman let rip on his side with an outburst that shocked many. At this week’s briefing, we asked the Gills boss how much his outburst hurt him personally.

Coleman told us, “Without a doubt! The first thing that I look at is myself. I will never shy away from taking criticism as I’ve been brought in to give this club a shake up really and give the team a shake up and after last Saturday, I felt that I have failed by the response that I got in the last half hour of the game.”

“I sat the players in the meeting room Monday morning and I told them all that I stand by my comments and I invited them to tell me that I was wrong – not many did!”

“The fact is that if you don’t self-reflect and you don’t look at what your input is into any kind of situation, particularly when it becomes a problem – like it did become a problem at the weekend.”

“If you cannot understand what your impact is on it, and you’re not prepared to recognise what your input is on it, you won’t go anywhere near solving problems that you have.”

“So, sometimes that has to be kept in house, sometimes it has to be made public, the big thing that I wanted to get across was that I empathise with the fans and put yourselves in their shoes; if you have traveled six or seven hours to watch a game of football and it’s cost you a lot of money giving up your time after working hard all week, that you have used to pay to get there, what would you feel like if you saw that in the last thirty minutes?”

“The previous hour wasn’t great, but the last thirty minutes was not acceptable so I wanted the players to feel their pain!” 

“I think we got the response on Tuesday, but whether that was down to me we’ll never know. But I think the fans who were at Walsall, a lot of them were the same that went to Barrow, ask them how they felt after both games? I think that’s how you can tell if we got a response or not.” 

Coleman has also been talking about his decision to make Armani Little Gillingham skipper and has had praise for the man he replaced. 

“It was a difficult decision,” the Gills boss told us, “Since I came to the club in the six games that we’ve played, Max Ehmer has been our most consistent player along with Robbie (McKenzie).”

“But I felt that we needed more influence higher up the pitch, I felt as though Max would benefit “just” marshaling the defence, which incidentally he did superbly at Walsall!” 

“I have been in the position of being a team captain, and then had it taken off me after a great run when I was captain at Southport and I quickly realised after the first game I played, that it didn’t change the way that you played, didn’t change the way the you interact with people.”

“You can be a captain on the pitch without having the armband on. You should have eleven different captains on the pitch, the reality is that you don’t this day and age; society in general there is a lack of leadership I think in the world basically.”

“But that doesn’t mean that three or four people cannot step up to the plate and influence the rest of the players who are playing.”

“Some might do it by accident, some may do it by their mouth, but you have to get that balance of getting everybody on the same page and playing for the cause and celebrating the little wins whilst trying to push in the same direction and that’s why I think that there should be three.”

“Four, five, six captains on the pitch and that’ll hopefully be visible on Saturday.” 

Looking ahead, Coleman admitted, “I think we have a natural future captain in Sam Gale! I will be amazed if Sam doesn’t captain this club at some point in his future!” 

“I believe it’s an honour to be a captain and the one thing that I know about Max he realises it’s an honour and he was hurting on Monday when team captain was taken off him.”

“He is still Club Captain, I think he is captain material for sure, he loves the club, but it is true that it takes a certain player to be a captain – some take to it like a duck to water, some don’t!”

“Some it makes them play better, but what was pleasing was the response that I got from Max at Walsall. He was only told Monday morning, but you would not have known by the way he played Tuesday – he marshaled the defence brilliantly!”