IT MIGHT come as a shock to Andy Murray and Lewis Hamilton, but there’s a surprise contender to land the Sports Personality of the Year award.

Forget world heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill and Tour de France winner Chris Froome, for Accrington Stanley’s new owner Andy Holt there is only one stand out candidate – if all goes to plan between now and the end of the season.

“If John Coleman gets this team promoted he should be Sports Personality of the Year,” declares Holt from his office at his company What More UK.

Having got involved in sponsoring Stanley in pre-season Holt is now smitten with the Reds – as his £1.2million investment to clear debts demonstrates.

While admitting they need to catch up off the pitch at the Wham Stadium, his admiration of the man in charge of the playing side is unquestionable.

For Holt, and many others, Coleman and Accrington Stanley are indelibly linked. They’ve tried to break the ties, but they’re at their best in each other’s company.

“But for his spell away he’s been Accrington Stanley as a front of house face,” said Holt.

“His record is unblemished as far as Accrington Stanley is concerned.

“Who knows where we can go this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got promoted. The lads are buzzing, they work for each other, they all get on, they stand by each other.”

Coleman took over at Stanley in 1999, leading the club back into the Football League, and although he left in 2012 he struggled to make the same impact at Rochdale, Southport and Sligo Rovers.

He returned to East Lancashire in September last year with the Reds involved in a relegation scrap. Fourteen months later they are in a promotion battle instead.

Getting promoted to League One this season would be an astonishing achievement for a club who consistently operate on the lowest budget in the league, but Holt is already bursting with pride at his new investment.

“I’m proud of what they’re doing, we’re achieving wonders on the pitch with the resources we’ve got.

“Whatever happens on the pitch you couldn’t argue but you look at what we’re doing, look at the feedback from Plymouth, all their fans said we deserved to win and we were the best team. Orient said the same when we beat them, these are other people’s fans saying this, so we must be doing something right.

“It’s got to be a source of pride. It’s proof that we’re doing something right. If you just sneak past a team and win they say you’re lucky, when fans of another team say you outplayed us it’s a great accolade.

“With the resources we’ve got it’s a real David and Goliath battle, you’ve got Portsmouth with 17,000 home fans, the scales are not in our favour.”

The Reds sit bottom of the average attendance table for League Two for matches at the Wham Stadium, severely inhibiting the club’s development on and off the pitch.

Holt shakes his head in admiration at how Stanley are competing with the big beasts of the division.

“I don’t know how they do it,” he said.

“We’re governed by Football League rules on how much we can spend on players anyway, so if we don’t get revenue up we can’t pay players a decent wage, so we have to build revenue up at the club to be able to address on-field issues.

“If you want to compete you’ve got to compete on all fronts. We’ve got to be able to pay a living wage.

“If we can’t get that off-field revenue up it will severely inhibit John’s ability to progress on the pitch."

“He is getting as much as he can out of very limited resources. We’re not going to go out and spend millions on players but I’m sure he would appreciate a little bit of slack.”

Holt’s journey from considering sponsoring Stanley to ploughing millions of his own money into the club had been a rapid one, but he is clear how much he cares for the club and how passionate to bring success to the town he is.

He is not the type to promise something he can’t achieve or talk of five-year plans to get the club into the Championship, but if he gets the backing of the town, he believes the possibilities are there.

“If we get a following wind and support from the locals Stanley could do okay. I’m not promising the Premier League, but I’m not promising the bottom of League Two either,” said Holt.

“It’s already punching above its weight, I think it can do even better. There’s real potential with the team we’ve got and the manager we’ve got.”

Holt, who cherishes his working class upbringing on the Stoops estate in Burnley, admits he hasn’t had a holiday this year, and now his weekends are taken up with nerve-shredding Stanley.

“I’ve been to just about every home game and the odd away, I want to go to more away. It’s so difficult to do it all as well as run the business,” he said.

“This league we’re in is a really hard travelling league, a local derby is Carlisle!

“There is very little where you can go and get back reasonably in a day, it’s hard suffering fans who have to travel that distance."

He added: “If we could get promotion it’s exactly the opposite in League One. That would help our fans and it would help the club, there would be more away fans.

“It would be a remarkable success story, it should be sung from the rooftops.

“We’ve got big ambitions, if we can get it rolling we’ll be okay if the town engages with it.

"That will turn what I think is going to be a success into a guaranteed success.”