Peter Taylor admitted the goal Gillingham conceded on Wednesday night showed where his team need improving most.

With defender Ryan Inniss down injured the Gills struggled to clear their lines and Sheffield United’s Conor Coady sruck.

That goal in the end proved to be the difference.

Taylor said: “It did look messy and that we were all over the place because we had an injury.

“There was a bit of silly panic and we should have just handled it.

“When Ryan Inniss goes off we had Steve Gregory or Amine Linganzi who could have gone in there and be centre half, that’s all we had to do. But there seemed to be panic and we seemed to be all over the place.

“It is a disappointing goal but since I have been here, most times I have said we have let in disappointing goals, and it’s still an area we have got to get better at.

“We are getting better but we still are conceding goals where we think we can do better.”

Overall, however, Taylor felt the scoreline was a little harsh, especially as his team had more than matched United before conceding.

“The start was good and we didn’t deserve to be 1-0 down,” he said.

“With a little bit of luck we could have scored. Ryan Inniss could have scored a couple with a little luck but they played a 4-5-1, which was very difficult to break down.

“It’s not easy to then go and pass it quickly on the surface, so maybe we took a little bit too long to go forward. It then means they have a bit more time to get solid.

“They weren’t easy opponents to play against but to be fair I thought the boys kept going and they never dropped their heads. They deserved the ball to drop in the right area for someone to score but it just wasn’t to be.”

Taylor tried to change the flow of the game from the bench, by introducing Chris Whelpdale and Myles Weston, but that didn’t work either.

Taylor said: “You’ve gone just over an hour and you are a goal down. If you don’t do anything then I think you are mad.

“You have got to try something different. They were doing something different and I felt with two wingers further up the top it might hurt them. It didn’t seem to be working and I felt we needed the front two again, so we went back to that.

“I would always prefer to lose a game trying something different to try and get back into it.”

Watch the video below to listen to the comments from Sheffield United manager Nigel Clough