Marcus gives us his preview ahead of tomorrow's game against Gillingham
The season started very well for the Gills with wins from their first two games. An opening day 2-0 win at Accrington followed by a 3-1 win at home to Burton gave them a perfect start to their campaign. In their next game they held Championship Millwall for the full 90 minutes before succumbing in the penalty shoot out. Since then though, they've lost every game apart from a 1-1 draw at Coventry on August 25th. Last weekend they came back from 1-0 down at home to Peterborough but their 2-1 lead lasted 6 minutes against the League One top scorers who eventually won 4-2.
Head to Head
We've played each other over 60 times and results have been pretty well spread with Gillingham winning 18 times in the League to our 22 times with 19 games ending in draws. There are a couple of significant games played between us amongst those numbers and the two most prominent from our point of view both happened in the same season. In the 2008/9 season we played three times, the first game was a cracker from our point of view with seven goals and a clean sheet at home. The away leg was a 2-2 in March 2009 but the real drama was to come in the Play-off final at Wembley. Sadly for us, Gillingham won that 1-0 with a 90th minute goal from Simeon Jackson.
Top Scorers
Tom Eaves tops the goalscoring table for Gillingham with four goals in League One. Josh Parker has also scored twice and there are five players who have scored just once. As an ex-Shrewsbury player (albeit on loan from Bolton) we've seen what a handful Tom can be on his day. Tall and physically strong, he's more than capable of beating teams almost single-handed as he showed when he scored all three goals for us against Crawley on April fools day 2013.
Clean Sheets
One in League One and one in the EFL cup.
Assists
Luke O'Neill 2.
Stats
The first thing I notice about Gillingham is that both of their clean sheets have been in away games although it's been a while since they happened. I also notice that in away games, most of the goals conceded are in the first half with just one goal conceded in the second half all season. The rest of the stats are what you might expect from a team in the lower reaches of the division, an average of just .75 points collected on their travels against a league average of 1.3 and a goal average (1) that is close to half their average goals conceded (1.75).
Referee
Ross Joyce from Cleveland. Games:10. Yellow Cards: 34. Red Cards: 1.
Assistants: Kevin Mulraine and Hristo Karaivanov
Fourth Official: Paul Hodskinson
Squad News
Town: John Askey has no new injury worries
Gills: Midfielder Regan Charles-Cook will need an ankle injury assessing before playing. Midfielder Billy Bingham is definitely going to be missing, also with an ankle injury.
Summary
On the face of it, we should be favourites for the three points given Gillingham's form but any sort of complacency would be daft. This is a team that put a couple past the league leaders last weekend and a team that have won more games than us in League One this season. Having said all of that, If we play to our potential for the full 90+ minutes we are more than a match for anyone.
COYB!!