Town manager John Sheridan has explained his thoughts behind the quintuple substitution at the weekend.

After blowing a 1-0 lead and finding themselves 3-1 down at home to Gillingham, the experienced Town boss decided to play all his cards at once making five substitutions all in one go – allowed thanks to new Covid rules in the EFL.

Dominic Thompson, Dion Conroy, Tom Broadbent, Joel Grant and Anthony Grant were replaced by Ellis Iandolo, Taylor Curran, Akinwale Odimayo, Jack Payne and Tyler Smith respectively on the 78th minute.

Sheridan revealed the substitutions were done to make the team defensively stronger.

He said: “It’s not something I’d usually do, it’s not something I’d want to do, but I just felt in the period of 20 minutes after half time they were just putting balls in there, throw-ins in there, corners in there and we just weren’t dealing with them.

“We said at half time we knew what they would throw at us but we just didn’t deal with it well enough. That’s why I made those substitutes.

“If I look at those goals, you can’t give cheap chances to them who will put the ball in the box and just put the ball up there.

“When we defend, we have to defend a lot stronger and stop the ball in the back of the net.”

And when it came to the collapse, Sheridan bemoaned Town’s defensive record throughout his whole tenure in charge.

He added: “Throughout the season the goals we concede have all been avoidable.

“A lot of them need people being switched on more, getting tighter, organising people quicker, so we can do things in training and when we’re set-up and we go through it in a lot of detail but when they go out on the pitch a lot of it is in the hands of the players.

“We need to deal with those situations and we haven’t, since I’ve been here anyway.”