Those of you who read my last column may have picked up on my mood at the time. To say I wasn’t happy would be a huge understatement. However, while my comments could have been viewed as much a rant as a considered piece, I still stand by my comments of the time and still have the same concerns.

We’ve not been playing very good football – and I still think our management have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to their tactical awareness. However, while we’re not firing on all cylinders ourselves, it is comforting to look around the Championship and see that in the grand scheme of things, we’re far from in the mire yet. It's not been vintage stuff so far, but things could be a whole lot worse.

There are three big pluses to take from the first month of the season:

Our league position

Yes I know we’ve lost three league games and we’ve not played great while doing so, but we have also won three games – and they represented three of the toughest matches we’ve faced so far this season. Leeds should have a team to beat ours, but we outplayed them. Preston are always a tough side to play, but we ground out a result against them too. The third and most remarkable win, was on Bank Holiday Monday at Turf Moor. Did anyone actually EXPECT us to win? I certainly didn’t, so the 2-1 win (which could and maybe should have been a 3-0 win by all accounts) was a real tonic for players and fans alike after a run of three straight defeats.

Our forward line

I think it’s fair to say that without the signings of Iwan Roberts and Darren Byfield, we could well be looking up at the rest of the league with few points and even fewer goals. As a side we don’t create a lot in the way of goalscoring chances, so when they do come, we need some real quality up front to make sure we take them. In Roberts and Byfield we now have that quality. The stats speak for themselves - when they score, we win. We’ve got the quality now – all we need to do is improve our service to them and we’ll look a much improved side.

Our opposition

At the time of writing Nottingham Forest and Wolves have yet to win a game from their opening half-dozen, so imagine how their fans must be feeling – especially as the expectations at both clubs are so much higher than they are here at Priestfield. Cardiff have started poorly and have since lost their top goalscorer Robert Earnshaw to West Brom (their manager Lennie Lawrence could be the next to go), while promotion hopefuls Sunderland, Leeds and Leicester have looked far from convincing so far, picking up just the one victory each to date.

Taking these three factors into consideration, our patchy early-season form could have seen us a lot worse off than we actually are. It is still early in the season – and even though we’ve already been hit with injuries, we do have a stronger-looking squad than last term. Hopefully Nyron Nosworthy, Alan Pouton and David Perpetuini can return to full match fitness and play a major part in the season ahead.

Another positive is the form of Darius Henderson, currently on loan at Swindon Town. He’s gone goal crazy since joining them and hopefully he’ll return to Priestfield a new player. With Iwan Roberts likely to find himself banned or rested at various points during the season, Darius could represent the ideal replacement for the big man. Hendo’s had a lot of unjustified stick from sections of the fans but hopefully he’ll come back and prove his worth at the Gills. Like Alan Pouton, I think a fit and firing Hendo could be a really useful player for us in months and years to come.

So, despite the concerns over tactics, team selection, substitutions and the like, there are reasons to be cheerful as we move into September. Hopefully we’ll be even more cheerful as the season progresses…