Willock is on the mend
Matty Willock warmed up with the Gills team on the pitch prior to their FA Cup replay against Sunderland. The young midfielder, signed following his release from Manchester United in the summer, has been missing long-term with a knee injury. He’s been limited to just one 45-minute appearance for the Gills and boss Steve Evans can’t wait to unleash him on League 1.
Evans said: “He came in a week or so ago and felt a twinge and we left him out for a couple of days. He came back and the fitness boys said he was 100%, he is ready. We put him in training and said, ‘how good is he?!’. “He needs to get some activity and whether that comes in training ground games, whatever.
“I talk about Jack Tucker and Joe Walsh, the players we’ve got, and we have a special boy in Willock.
“I worked hard to sign him. I spent nights outside his house waiting for his dad to come back from work so I could talk to him. His dad actually said perseverance won the day.”
Gillingham boss Steve Evans got the reaction he wanted after a heated half-time team talk. He asked for more quality from his side in the second half of their FA Cup first round replay against Sunderland and they showed it, bossing the game following the restart.
The Gills finally got the winning goal in the 105th minute.
Evans said: “First half I wasn’t so happy. It was more of a battle rather than getting the ball down and playing.
“We needed a reaction second half, which we got.
“We should have won the second half quite comfortably, the stats back that up. The quality of play was good, we got the ball down and started to penetrate properly.
“You go to extra-time, the boys are dominating and we think do we make changes? We just believed we were so far on top of the game we didn’t have to change anything. It could have had an adverse reaction and we got the goal.”
Prior to that Evans felt the Gills should have had a penalty for a handball in the box. Most of the crowd thought so, too. “I don’t know why we didn’t get it,” he said.
“I genuinely think the referee wanted to give it. He looked at the linesman 25 times!
“But I think we deserved to win the cup tie over the two games. We deserved to go through away at Sunderland and we certainly deserved to go through on Tuesday.”
Sunderland, twice winners of the FA Cup, were making excuses pre-match about a