JOHN Coleman has urged his Stanley players to shed the ‘little Accrington’ tag and believe in themselves.

Stanley are seeking a third win on the bounce when they travel to Field Mill tomorrow to face Mansfield, and Coleman sees no reason why the Reds can’t mount a play-off push.

They are nine places off the top seven but only two points separates those nine sides, and a fifth win in six games would see them move above the Stags.

“We have to shake off this little Accrington tag,” said Coleman “Okay we haven’t got great resources, we haven’t got a great deal of money but we’ve got good players, we’ve got the status of being a Football League club, we’ve got a good infrastructure around the club, we’ve got a nice ground, we’ve got adequate training facilities so why beat yourselves up with ‘little Accrington’ and run ourselves down.

“If we don’t believe in ourselves and I don’t believe in the players who is going to believe in them?

“We are capable of competing in this league so why should we accept that competing is staying up?

“The last three years when I was here we were knocking around the top half and that’s where I want to be this year.”

Coleman and his assistant, Jimmy Bell, have had Mansfield watched and believe they know what lies in store in the East Midlands.

“They play a physical style of football,” he said. “It is quite direct but watching the videos of them they are capable of playing as well, they’ve scored some great goals this season. We know quite a few of their players as well.

“But they will have looked at us, they’ll have done their homework on us so they will know how we play and they might be looking at trying to counter what we do.”

Coming up with a successful game plan to get one up on his opposite number, in this case Paul Cox, is all part of the fun of the job for Coleman, who returned to the Store First Stadium for a second spell last month.

“We’ve got to address what they do,” added Coleman. “We’ve got to take on board their style of football, then we’ve got to come up with a plan which we are in the process of trying to do to combat that and that’s the thrill of football and football managing, it’s a battle of wills.

“It’s like being an army general, you’re trying to outmanoeuvre the opposition so you’re coming up with plans and tactics to defeat them in the battle, because it is a battle on Saturday and every game you play is a battle.

“Sometimes you get your strategy right and sometimes it doesn’t quite work.”

Lady luck was definitely with Stanley last weekend as they kept their good run going with a fortuitous 1-0 win over Plymouth.

Coleman was critical of his players in the aftermath of that win, but having watched the match again since, he has slightly re-assessed his opinion.

“We weren’t as bad as I thought we were,” he said. “We worked harder than I thought we did.

“I was very critical of the forwards and while I know they can play better they weren’t as bad as I thought they were.”