Michael Flynn admits moving to Gillingham remains his “biggest regret” in football – despite playing over 100 games for them.

The crocked City midfielder spent two-and-a-half years at the Priestfield Stadium and wore the captain’s armband under Ronnie Jepson.

But the Gills never regained the Championship spot they lost in his first season and two bottom-half finishes in the third tier followed.

Having quit Paul Jewell’s Premier League-bound Wigan in February 2005 to join them, Flynn will always wonder what might have been if he had opted instead to stay put in Lancashire.

He said: “It wasn’t an easy decision to swap the top of the Championship for the bottom. I did have the chance of another year at Wigan and they had a great side who were always going to go up.

“I could have had the chance of being involved with a club in the Premiership but I took the move for the sake of my career and that bit I don’t regret. I’d heard a lot about Stan Ternent and needed to be playing week in, week out, which I did at Gillingham.

“If we’d stayed up, it would have been a great decision, but we went down on the last day by a single goal and then the manager left.

“I thought we could get promoted in the next two seasons. But the club started to cut costs, which made it very hard to come back up again.”

Flynn was on to his third boss within nine months. Neale Cooper replaced Ternent that summer but was also gone after just 22 games in charge as Jepson stepped in.

Flynn said: “If Ronnie had got the job from the start of that first season after we’d gone down, then I think we would have been right up there. But our season didn’t effectively start until November.

“It was disappointing that we never really challenged but our home form was always good. Gillingham have got a good support and it’s always a tough place to go.

“Even when we finished 14th, I think we had the second-best home record in the division behind Nottingham Forest and they went up. The crowds were good, even though we were never up there in the league, and they got behind us.

“It’s a long way to go and a tight ground with the supporters on top of you. The lads used to use that to our advantage because nobody wanted to play us there. I think our fans now would do anything for that.”

Flynn returned to training this week and is in line for a bench spot against his old club tomorrow. Boss Peter Taylor said: “He might be able to give us 20 minutes.”

The frustrated Welshman is still waiting to kick his first ball in anger this season but he has not lost faith in his City team-mates to bounce back from the difficult start.

Flynn said: “It’s been disappointing so far and there’s no point in denying that. But we know there’s a lot more to come from the squad.

“It’s tough at the moment but we’ve got to stick together and just dig deep.”