Scally aims for Championship
Monday 8 April 2013 15:51, UK
Gillingham chairman Paul Scally believes manager Martin Allen can potentially lead the club all the way to the Championship.
The Gills became the first Football League team to secure promotion this season as they beat Torquay 1-0 at Priestfield on Saturday to make sure of a top-three finish in League Two, with attentions now turned to sealing the title. It represents an impressive achievement for Allen in his first campaign at the club and, having provided the funds to strengthen after narrowly missing out on the play-offs in successive years, Scally feels Gillingham can look ahead to a League One campaign with optimism next term. And he has even likened the current crop to those who took the Kent club all the way to the second tier at the start of this century. "What will be interesting and really exciting is to see how these players do cope with League One football because I think most of them will cope really well. In fact, I think most of them could go on and maybe play in the Championship," Scally told reporters after Saturday's victory. "If you look at the Gills team of 1998/99 there was (Paul) Smith, (Andy) Hessenthaler, (Barry) Ashby, (Guy) Butters. That was a team who could go through two or three divisions and they held their own in the Championship. "And I think if we can keep it all together, if no Premier League club comes in and whisks Martin away, which is always possible I suppose, I think if we can keep him here, which I'm sure we can, then he's the man who can take us back to the Championship."