Former Crawley Town striker's cheeky response after scoring on his debut for Gillingham

The striker left Crawley Town just after Christmas after being left out of three match day squads because of the ‘serious’ offers the club received for him. The move angered fans. In a video club update co-owner and co-chairman Preston Johnson explained the reason for selling the star player.

He said: “This was ultimately just a football move that we felt the need to make to benefit the club. And on the football side of things I don’t think that it should be a surprise to anyone that has watched us this year that we lack some size in our attack and that’s made it very difficult for us to come to our forwards in dangerous positions where we can make threats to score.

"One of the biggest challenges in that respect is that two of our better forwards, not only Tom but Dom Telford are both smaller and that made it really hard for us to play them together at the same time and still be effective in the attacking third. There was some redundancy there to be honest and so, it didn’t really make sense of us to keep both in the squad long term when we couldn’t play them together. Particularly as Tom’s contract was up at the end of the summer and wasn’t going to be a part of our future plans so we had a decision to make, not just for the rest of the season but also going forward long term as well.”

On Saturday, 39 minutes into his Gills debut, Nichols scored to give the bottom-of-the-table side the lead against relegation rivals Hartlepool United. His side, which included Glenn Morris in goal, went on to win 2-0.

And on Instagram, Nichols posted: “A goal and a 2-0 win on my debut, good job there’s no height restrictions in this side.”

Fan and columnist Steve Herbert said: “Lump on him to score against us in three weeks time!”