Eli King’s start to his Gillingham career has been nothing short of phenomenal since his deadline day arrival from Cardiff City.

The 23-year-old who missed nearly all of last season with an ACL injury, joined the Gills in the closing hours of deadline day – indeed driving to Chesterfield for his medical whilst Gareth Ainsworth’s side were claiming a point on the pitch.

He went on to make a sensational debut at Rochdale when he replaced the unlucky Zech Obiero, but he hasn’t looked back since and is already less than a month into his Gills career, a massive favourite with Rainham End, and this week we’ve been talking to him for the first time!

“It’s been pretty much one hundred mile an hour since I got here.” King told us about his move. “Even now it’s nice to be able to have a look back over the past few weeks and think about what has happened, it really has been a positive few weeks!” he admitted.

“To be fair I have tried to involve myself with as many of the squad as I can – I knew Nick (Freeman) from before anyway and so it was nice to have one familiar face and someone you know that you can speak to.”

“Really feel like I am in that middle group where at twenty-three years old, there are some guys older than me, but there are also a lot younger too. So, I have tried my best to get involved with everyone.”

“I briefly spoke to Nick before signing as it really was a quick turnaround in terms of the move itself. There was a lot behind the move – I could have stayed at Cardiff to see what happened there, but I just thought considering the context of my situation recovering from an ACL and not played football for a whole year, it seemed like the right place for me to take charge of my career a little bit rather than wait and hope that things might happen, wait for a chance at Cardiff.”

“Gillingham seem like the right club to allow me to take charge of my career again and come and be a part of something, which is another huge thing for me.”

“The manager has previous experience of getting teams promoted and getting the real good feelings within a team and that was something that I wanted to be a part of as well – be a part of something special and a good group and one that hopefully succeeds as well!”

“I was lucky where I did actually play a couple of pre-season games this year at Cardiff – on twenty to thirty minutes – but I was fortunate to get those minutes into my legs in what were twenty-ones games. I know that people will look at that and say that it’s not really realistic.”

“But I can assure you that in those games, I more than made sure that I could get absolutely everything I could out of it so that I could be ready for something serious and my long-term future.”

“I know that I am still going to have to adjust and get used to League Two again – the intensity of the game, playing style and learning a set of new tactics, but in terms of my knee and feeling physically, I have felt pretty good so far.”

King’s debut at Rochdale was a joy as he agreed, “You cannot really ask for much more – I could have scored and was frustrated that I didn’t before the end and round things off with a goal. But in terms of a debut, you can’t ask for much more; the win – the feeling around that day was so positive and long may that continue.”