JIMMY Phillips wasn’t about to play the blame game despite watching Wanderers ship five goals for the fourth game running.

The interim boss certainly wasn’t happy with the margin of defeat at Priestfield, nor with the defensive mistakes that led to both Gillingham goals in the first half.

But while professional pride may have been dented by some of the results over the last few weeks, Phillips remained measured with criticism after the game.

“I was disappointed,” he said. “We had great support from the fans but conceding five again isn’t good.

“The manner of the first goal from the free-kick, a poor clearance, we are not looking to blame individuals but if you are going to concede then you want to the opposition to work really hard for a goal and I don’t think they did for the first two.

“At half time we told the players we have to try and keep it as tight as they can for the first 15 minutes but then all of a sudden, we’re four down.

“We can’t let it get into a situation where we’re blaming people.

The Football Ventures consortium watched on for the first time since their takeover and were brought immediately up to speed with the scale of their rebuilding job.

“The new owners said for themselves when they took over on Wednesday that this would be a big task and they saw for themselves how big it actually is,” Phillips remarked.

“The start of that task is a new manager in the building Monday and then transfer deadline day.

“There is a lot of work to be done to boost the squad because it certainly needs more senior players with big characters to join the fight, because that is what it is going to be to stay in this league.

“Positively, I think it’s a fight we can still win.”