Gillingham boss Andy Hessenthaler admitted his team were fortunate to edge a seven-goal rollercoaster at Priestfield on Saturday.

The Gills threw away 2-0 and 3-1 leads in League 2 against Northampton before running out 4-3 winners thanks to Danny Kedwell’s penalty in stoppage time.

“We’ve been fortunate but that’s football – that’s what happens,” said Hessenthaler.

“It was a crazy game. I don’t want to be involved in that type of game again, especially at home. Ultimately, it comes down to winning a game of football – sometimes you win ugly and sometimes games like that happens.

“Fortunately for us we ended up winning in the last minute. I’ve been involved in games like that when it has gone the other way.”

Hessenthaler expressed his disappointments at some of his team’s defending after they got themselves into a position of superiority, only to press the self-destruct button in front of their own fans.

“When we went 2-0 up, we stopped doing things that we were good at in respect of stopping them,” reflected Hessenthaler.

“Early on when the ball was played in to Akinfenwa we had enough bodies around him. We got a bit complacent and thought that we should have gone on and got the third and fourth – and we need to learn from that as it cannot happen.

“But we made it too easy (for them) and it was too stretched in the end.

“3-1 is a dangerous scoreline. They got (the second goal) from a straight ball we didn’t deal with. I’ve got to say it was a foul on Charlie Lee – he got a push in the back.

“It was a good set play (for the third goal) but you can’t let players run off you like that, according to the boys Matt Fish got blocked off. It was a clever free-kick.”

Hessenthaler praised his forwards, including the contribution of Frank Nouble, who failed to get on the scoresheet despite having an impressive game down the right flank.

“I always felt that we could still score (a fourth goal) as we had the players up front – but not that late,” said Hessenthaler.

“Frank was a handful most of the afternoon but Kuffour was man-of-the-match by a country mile. It was a terrific hat-trick and he was fantastic for us.”