How long have you supported
I've followed the Gills for around 17 years now and have been a season ticket holder for the last decade.
What is your present squad like?
(OA) Thinner than Posh Spice, I'd say.
With everyone fit and available, our starting XI is more than capable of achieving a top-half finish, but of course things aren't that straightforward are they? In our squad I think we have possibly three, maybe four players who are capable of playing at a higher level.
We have just completed something of a coup by somehow convincing Sir Alex Ferguson to let us borrow striker Febian Brandy for three months and allow him to play in The FA Cup on Saturday, so that adds another pacy striker to our front line.
Just about good enough to stay up, I'd say. We've been solid at home, but poor away from home (our away record speaks for itself) so I think we're missing some real experience and grit in the side on our travels. But, at home, we seem to do okay.
How do you think you are doing this season?
(OA) We're a real Jekyll and Hyde outfit this season, as you'll probably notice on Saturday. While we are absolutely awful away from home, at Priestfield we tend to be pretty strong.
It's a source of frustration that the same players can't reproduce their home form when they play away, but that's why they're League One players, I guess.
OK-ish. We're a top-ten side at home and a bottom of the table side away from home, so a lot of our good work at Priestfield is undone by our ineptitude away from home. If we even had a mediocre record away from home we'd be safe in mid-table, but as things stand we're right on the cusp of a relegation battle.
We've got our rivals at arms' length at the moment, and as long as we continue to pick up points at Priestfield, we should secure League One football for next season.
Which youngster has made the biggest impression in your team this season?
(OA) We've had three youngsters play for us this season.
Forward Luke Rooney looks a real talent, but needs to be eased into first team football gently after scoring a wonder goal with his first touch as a pro earlier this season.
Midfielder Jack Payne has come into the side and shown maturity way beyond his teenage years, and loanee Matt Fry, a centre half from West Ham, looks a real prospect and with the right guidance should be capable of playing his football in the top two divisions in the future.
If Fry gets clearance from West Ham, he'll start on Saturday, with Rooney and Payne likely to be on the bench.
That's difficult to assess, really, as we haven't had a youngster play consistently through the entire season. Jack Payne started the season well, but was later withdrawn from the side, while Luke Rooney has, in only a handful of appearances, scored two of our best goals this season.
Of the players we have in the starting XI now, Darren Dennehy is our best young'un. He's on loan from Cardiff and a Republic of Ireland Under-21 international centre half who defends properly. Too often defenders fancy themselves as the next Beckenbauer and it usually results in calamity in the defence, but Dennehy knows his job and does it well.
What's your manager like and will he still be there at the end of the season?
(OA) Mark Stimson polarises opinion among Gills fans. Some like him and recognize that he's doing a good job, where as others can't stand him.
He can come across as a little bit of a cold fish - whether that's actually the case I don't know - and he seems to thrive on challenges and confrontation, which I actually quite like about him.
He's working to a virtually non-existent budget and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he moved on to pastures new in the next couple of seasons unless the club can back him more.
I can't see him being content to just survive season after season. He'll want to progress and if the club can't give him the opportunity to do that, I fully expect him to move to a club that will.
The second part of that question is the one most Gills fans will have on their lips come the end of the campaign. In my opinion, he did superbly in League Two, but at League One level he has struggled.
The team's failure away from home is a case-in-point. It's easy to play on your home patch, in familiar surroundings, but when you go away from home, making long trips etc you need your side to be mentally strong and well-drilled.
For whatever reason, the team hasn't delivered and the responsibility for that lies with the manager. Either he isn't setting up the team well enough, or the players he has signed aren't good enough to carry out his instructions.
Either way, Stimson's responsible and if Paul Scally decideds' to keep Stimson on for next season (which would be the final year of his contract) it is imperative that he has learned the lessons of this season (and of two seasons ago, when we were relegated from League One) and strengthens the side accordingly in the summer.
As a whole, the jury is still out on our manager at this level and only producing a side that can compete and get results home AND away will he prove himself as a good League One manager, in my opinion.
Are you happy with your chairman/backroom staff?
(OA) Am I happy with the chairman? Not really, no. He took over an ailing club, turned it around and got us back on our feet. Some shrewd managerial appointments meant we progressed from the bottom of the old fourth division to the top half of the Championship. But then he got ideas above his station, took his eye off the ball and made a catastrophic error. Spending £9m on a stand budgeted for £3.9m put a huge debt upon the club, which escalated to around the £15m mark.
Last season he sold Priestfield Stadium to himself, effectively transferring around £10m of that debt to a subsidiary company, but the Gills are still millions in the red, with little to no tangible assets to stand against it. He now lives in
I suspect only the recession and the resulting collapse of the property/land market has prevented Paul Scally from walking away from
Everything I said in my previous interview with you remains the same.
He is still responsible for the ailing financial state of the club and, more recently, he has announced the arrival of a new Vice Chairman, a chap by the name of Michael Anderson, over whom is a huge question mark over his involvement with two failed clubs in the past and his failed attempt to gain a seat on the Ipswich Town board.
Best place to have a pint before the game?
Gillingham
If you're more organised and are travelling by car or train, then I'd recommend leaving a bit earlier and stopping off in
(More on that in the Pub Crawl posted soon enough)
Any updates on your thoughts regrading Southend United?
(OA) Southend are the ones in trouble at the moment, but I think that an awful lot more clubs are only a fraction away from being in similar strife, too. It seems a worrying amount of clubs have been living outside of their means for a while now, and the recession may be about to bring that into sharp focus as banks and creditors look to call in their debts.
Football clubs are a part of English culture, and regardless of your own club loyalties, to see one closed down would be a massive disappointment to English football fans everywhere.
Only that I hope that, whatever division you find yourselves in next season, your club is intact and in a position to move forward and progress.
(Many Thanks to Simon from http://gillingham.clubfans.co.uk/)