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Gillingham 1 Burton 2: Second best in every department says Gills assistant Paul Raynor

Gillingham assistant manager Paul Raynor had no arguments about Saturday’s result.

He admitted their side were second best across the park in defeat to Burton Albion.

The Gills were unable to build on an early goal as Burton won thanks to a double from Nathan Broadhead.

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Gillingham boss Steve Evans with assistant Paul Raynor Picture: Ady Kerry
Gillingham boss Steve Evans with assistant Paul Raynor Picture: Ady Kerry

Report: Gillingham 1 Burton 2

Reacting to the defeat, Raynor said: “We weren’t happy with it at all, as you could imagine, and we were second best all over the pitch.

“You have to give Burton Albion a lot of credit. They were nice and well organised, they were solid and they hurt us in areas where we didn’t do things well enough, we didn’t track our runners and we didn’t win enough second balls.

“We didn’t do our jobs, the basics weren’t there, our composure on the ball wasn’t there, we didn’t retain the ball well enough and when you are doing that you are going to struggle to create opportunities.

“It ended up a scrappy game for us and it was one they controlled for large periods and that was the disappointment.”

The Gills had plenty of attacking threats but were unable to create many clear-cut opportunities throughout.

“We lacked intensity,” Raynor said.

“I was there on the sideline trying to get us going, trying to up the tempo and that’s how we want to play and how we played at Doncaster (last weekend).

“Nigel (Clough, the Burton manager) said he was concerned about our pace and power, but they dealt with it quite easily because we didn’t have any pace or power, the intensity was dropped in that respect.

“Their two centre halves had a comfortable afternoon and our centre halves certainly didn’t.

“They were better than us on the day and we will work very hard to put that right and sometimes you can’t make excuses, you have to give credit to Burton, but we made it very easy for them.”

The windy conditions didn’t make it easy for either team but Raynor wasn’t using that as the basis for his team’s failures.

He said: “It was never going to be a classic, it was always going to be scrappy, but they dealt with the conditions much better. Their decision making was much better than ours, they were quite composed in their possession when they got chance to do it.

“We made a number of poor decisions, we took the easy option towards the end, by playing long balls up to Mika (Mandron), out of desperation more than anything, when sometimes you should get that extra pass off, get it wider and put more quality into the box.

"It ended up the easy option to hit their big man and play off the scraps but that was never going to work, they were quite happy with that and dealt with it reasonably well.”

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