‘We have nothing but the fondest feelings for Tom as a person and we wish him all the best’ – Crawley Town co-owner Preston Johnson explains the reasoning behind Tom Nichols sale

The 29-year-old striker joined the Gills on January 1 after a month of him not being able to play for the Reds and a lot of speculation.

Nichols had not played for the Reds since the club received a ‘serious offer’ for him on December 2.

In a video update, co-owner and co-chairman Johnson has given a full explanation on why the club sold the popular striker.

He said: “I apologise that we had to be silent for a few weeks on some of the reasonings behind the sale of Tom Nichols which ended up going to Gillingham. I wanted to give you guys more clarity as far as our reasonings behind it as a football club.

"First off, we want you guys to know that we love Tom Nichols. He's a good player, he’s given a lot of good years to our club and we're always going to be thankful for his contributions on and off the pitch.

"I know there were some crazy rumours going around about how we allegedly made this move because of some off the pitch reason and I just want to clarify and say again that that is totally false.

"We have nothing but the fondest feelings for Tom as a person and we wish him all the best. 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.

“To offer some context, on the one hand Tom was turning 30 in the summer and getting to that age where performances typically begin to decline and he wasn’t going to be cheap for us to retain this summer anyway and we had an offer on the table that paid us a significant amount to let him go in January which we can then reinvest in the club to strengthen other positions of need down the road.

"On the other hand we have Dom Telford who is four years younger, one of the elite strikers in League Two and if we can give him the ball in a dangerous position which has been a primary focus for us for the past few weeks, which we’ve already seen some positive results from in the chances that we have created.

"We weighed all that information and came to the best decision what we felt for the club so for Tom, I know a lot of people expressed concerns that we sold him to Gillingham who is a rival in the relegation fight at the moment and weighed that as heavily as part of our decision making as we could in the decision making process for everyone involved.

"We wish him nothing but the best and I know that some of you are still going to disagree with the decision but I wanted to at least say what our thinking was and it wasn’t a decision that we made lightly.”

On his departure, Nichols said: "It’s a day that’s been coming for a little while as everyone knows.

"It’s a strange one but it’s exciting to get it over the line in the end.

"I knew I wasn’t allowed to play from the Swindon game. I was training as normal that week and I was in the team to play then I got told after training that day that they had accepted an offer for me from another club and I couldn’t play any more.

"They didn’t want to risk injury and stuff like that. It was a strange one because I wanted to stay fit and keep training and then just waited to get it sorted which has taken up until now.”