Marked for Jack Phillips
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad16 Nov 2026
16 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Gillingham lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Gillingham may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Elías Ovelar and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
Eli King knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Eli King trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Robbie McKenzie
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market16 Nov 2026
The Eli King talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Gillingham know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad9 Nov 2026
24 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Gillingham lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match7 Nov 2026
3‑0, and Max Sanders took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Gillingham tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Gillingham may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Jaden Brown and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Dylan Moody
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A performance of 8.22 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Market9 Nov 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Simon Bailey, on a 3‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad2 Nov 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Jack Phillips
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gillingham lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.59 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
At 37 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 7.80, and nobody on the pitch better.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Gillingham may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Match31 Oct 2026
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Gillingham and Notts County, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Match31 Oct 2026
Notts County left with the points after a 2‑4 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Liam Grimshaw and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The terraces2 Nov 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Tudor Mendel-Idowu has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad26 Oct 2026
39 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Gillingham lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Omar Beckles breaks a bone — 18 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 18 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Chizzy Ezenwata, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 7.76
A mark of 7.76 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Match24 Oct 2026
Nobody wants to play Gillingham right now
4 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Liam Grimshaw and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The terraces26 Oct 2026
At 18 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
The afternoon belonged to Reece Cole
A mark of 7.87, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Gillingham are still strangers to each other
18 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tudor Mendel-Idowu has just signed for Gillingham, and for once the answer mattered.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Millwall keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Gillingham have gone to Leeds United with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Elías Ovelar and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$39.0K was the most the club would pay and West Bromwich Albion were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at Gillingham
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
No hiding place for Eli King
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Eli King, and the manager let it.