I believe that proper football fans should only really support one club side. Ideally, their club should be their local team, or at least it should have some sort of tangible connection with the person concerned.

But I also think that many fans also have a soft spot for other teams, for a variety of reasons.  Perhaps their local club isn't the club they support, but they look out for their results anyway.  Maybe their parents support a different club (my mother follows Tottenham from afar, while by father is a Gooner, but I've converted them both to Gillingham in recent years).

So, while I think fans should only really truly support one club side, I think there's room for a 'second team', whose results and progress fans can follow.  If that team's in a totally different division, or a totally different country, that makes it all the more interesting.

If you ask many people, they'll offer up very predictable answers.  Liverpool/Manchester United/Arsenal/Spurs in England, AC Milan/Juventus/Inter in Italy, Barcelona/Real Madrid in Spain etc.

If you follow one of Europe's big guns, why not go out on a limb and support a team that has virtually no history of success?  That way you'll experience both ends of the footballing spectrum, and maybe even learn a little bit about a club and a league that you otherwise wouldn't have known anything about.

So why not adopt a second team?  My team.  Gillingham.  I'll be talking about them regularly in my Footbo blog this season, so I suppose I should tell you a bit about the club:

We're nicknamed the Gills (pronounced 'Jills'), and play our home games at the Priestfield Stadium, which holds 11,000 fans.  At the moment, we're averaging less than half that amount for home games.

We play in Coca Cola League Two, which is the fourth tier of English football (Premier League > Championship > League One > League Two), and play 46 league games per season.

Our manager, Mark Stimson, is a former player for Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, and has managed a number of non-league teams before getting his 'big chance' to manage a Football League club and joining Gillingham.

Our captain, midfielder Andrew Crofts, is a local lad who came through the youth team to become a first team regular.  He is now a full international for Wales, and has been tipped for a move to a bigger club in League One or the Championship, although so far nobody has made a good enough offer for him. 

Our star players are goalkeeper Simon Royce, who previously played for Charlton Athletic and Leicester City, centre back Simon King, who has the talent to play at a much higher level in seasons to come, and our pacy striker Simeon Jackson, a Canadian Under-21 international who we signed from non-league side Rushden & Diamonds last season.

The club is 115 years old, and our best successes have come in the last decade.

We've played at Wembley twice, in two of the most dramatic playoff finals in recent memory.  I'll share those tales with you later this season, as each match deserves a blog post of their own.  In our memorable promotion season for 1998-1999, we also reached the quarter finals of The FA Cup after knocking out one Championship team and two Premier League teamsm, earning the club the FA's Giant-killers award.

Since then the club has fallen on hard times and now stands around £3-4million in debt, and no longer owns their own ground.  Off the field, the club is in a mess, with the fans largely opposed to the man in charge of the club, controversial chairman Paul Scally. But after two relegations in four seasons, the Gills are looking to bounce back - and they've already claimed a great away win at last season's contenders Darlington, ending a run of seven months without an away victory.

For many football fans in England, Gillingham FC aren't even on the radar.  A small club which has never been in English football's top division in their 115-year history. 

If you're based in mainland Europe, then Gillingham is the nearest English club to where you live, being a mere 45 minute train ride from the port of Dover.  So if you like English football, but prefer to support a 'local' team, then Gillingham's the club for you.

I'm a local lad, so Gillingham's definitely the club for me.  Why not join me and follow The Gills this season?  We need all the support we can get!