John Akinde was relieved to have got his first goal of the season and hopes it’s the first of many.

Akinde’s last goal for the Gills came in February, a month before the 2019/20 season was curtailed.

He scored the winner at Crewe and feels his form is on the up.

“Scoring goals is what I wanted to do when I came here,” said the 31-year-old.

“It’s always what I want to do when I play football. I just take it in my stride and try and get in the positions to score. I am happy to have scored and hopefully it is the first of many.

“The two games previous to Saturday I felt good, unfortunately I didn’t play at the weekend (against Sunderland) but it is what it is and I came on and scored on Tuesday. It’s football and I just keep getting in the box and keep trying to score goals.”

His winning goal ended a run of five straight defeats for the Gills.

He said: “When you go on a run of losing games, you are thinking, ‘right, we need to win the next one.’

“To have won was a relief and it is just about building on that now, taking the performances we have had in previous games and matching them with the results.

“It was a massive win, we knew we had to win the game after the results in recent weeks. We got the result and that’s the main thing. I feel we have probably played better in the last few games but didn’t get a result. We will take the three points and build on it.

“We had been playing well, it has been frustrating not getting the results we have deserved.

“It is good to get the goal, I just need to be getting in those areas to get the chances and score more goals.”

His goal was created by Jordan Graham, the winger claiming his third assist of the season after an inch-perfect cross.

“He is a good player,” Akinde said. “He gets the ball in the box and me and the boys do our best to get on the end of it.

“That is what we have to keep doing, we have to take our chances, that was the difference on Tuesday, we didn’t take them in the last few games and that is what we have been honing in on. We are creating and we have to take them.

“We have a great bunch of lads with good quality players and we always believed the run was going to end.”

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