MARK STIMSON admitted Saturday’s 3-0 defeat against Crewe was his lowest point in management.

The Gillingham manager saw his side cave in to their League 1 relegation rivals Crewe and the club now face a desperate final nine games to save themselves from the drop.

“This is the lowest point,” he said. “I went through a situation when I first took over at Grays. We had two games to go and we needed a win, and we won the penultimate game.

“This is a much bigger scale, the rewards are much bigger. It’s a big challenge and one I’m looking forward to. We’ll work as hard as we can until next Saturday and get the points we want.”

Stimson is keen to tackle the situation head on and has clear targets in mind.

He said: “There are 27 points. If we take half of those points I think we’ll be all right. That will be enough.

“That’s not a massive task in normal situations but if you look at our last few games we haven’t taken half the points and we’ve got to change that around."