Football Season Guide

League 1

England

League 1

2013/2014

Gillingham

In

Adebayo Akinfenwa(att, Northampton), Antonio German(att, Brentford), Amine Liganzi(mid, Accrington Stanley), Cody McDonald(att, Coventry)

Out

Lewis Montrose(mid, York), Jack Payne(mid, Peterborough), Andy Frampton(def, Wimbledon), Jack Evans(def, Tamworth)

Gillingham are starting life in League One after a superb League Two season in which they maintained a high level of form throughout the campaign and deservedly ended the season as Champions. The Gills have become a yo-yo club over the last seven years, and they will be desperate to finally make the step up and stay in the third tier for more than one or two seasons. They kept the core of the squad that impressed so much last season, and added some useful signings, with strongman striker Adebayo Akinfenwa and Cody McDonald both being proven as decent players on League One level. In Martin Allen, Gillingham have a talented manager who has a lot to prove in League One, after being inexplicably fired by Notts County despite achieving good results with the club in what was his most recent spell in the division. Their current first team squad contains eighteen players, but a big strength of theirs is that the majority of players are used to playing together, and Allen is not expected to dip into the loan market too often.

Target

The priority is to avoid going straight back to League Two, but the majority of fans will be hoping for a top half finish. The Gills have kept the core of a title winning squad together and managed to additionally strengthen, so they definitely seem well equipped to finish in the top half. It needs to be noted that some of the recent League Two winners, such as Chesterfield of two seasons ago, struggled badly in League One, but Gillingham have enough experienced players in their squad to not be expected to share the same fate.