Boss Evans twice turned down the chance to leave Gills this season

Evans added: “I spent four or five weeks chatting to the chairman in the summer. Was it going to be a project or was I going to just be here for a year. “In the back of the chairman’s mind he might have been thinking I would be here five or six months and when an opportunity came I would jump. “I said, ‘if Glasgow Celtic pick up the phone, I’ll be on the train and handing the car keys back!’ Chances are I won’t go as high as that but when (those clubs came in for me), the conversation didn’t last long at all.

“That has probably strengthened the bond between us and what we both want to achieve, because certainly with the Scottish interest, he probably thought I would be keen because it was the SPL and I would want to move back to Scotland, but I have no thoughts of either.”

Evans had been living away from home before the coronaviorus crisis, on St Mary’s Island in Chatham.

While making progress on the field, Evans has made plenty off it too. He was once hounded off the Priestfield pitch as Rotherham United manager but the Gills fans in the Rainham End have been singing his name this season.

He said: “I have been brilliantly received by the people of Gillingham, from St Mary’s to the town centre of Gillingham itself. People stop me in Tesco to say hello.

“You never achieve anything of much if you are divided. Look at the clubs who are successful, it’s the ones who are knitted together, Liverpool, West Brom or Leeds.

“It is systematic through the leagues that the teams who perform well are the ones who normally have a decent budget but you need to be as one, with manager and chairman. It has to be the strongest relationship of all, then players, staff and supporters.

“You have to win and lose together. We have pretty much done that in our games at Priestfield. We have won together and enjoyed it and been flat and low when we haven’t, but we have been around to pick each other up.”