Danny Kedwell missed Gillingham’s trip to Shrewsbury and boss Andy Hessenthaler admitted the striker’s absence was a major hindrance.

Kedwell (pictured) is the club’s leading scorer with 11 goals but is sidelined with a cracked rib.

Hessenthaler said: "It did highlight how much we miss Keds and that’s not being disrespectful to (his replacement) Dennis Oli.

"We do miss him as he is our leading scorer up top and we were also without Jo (Kuffour). He hasn’t trained for two weeks and there is no way we could have got him involved."

Hessenthaler is unsure when Kedwell will return but added: "It’s getting better by the day."

Oli, who was making his first league start of the season, was defended by Hessenthaler.

He said: "We had no other real options as we needed a target man against their big lads at the back.

"People can have a pop at Dennis but he tried hard. Some of his ball retention has to be better but he had a lot of ‘fight-balls’ as well where we didn’t pass it well enough."