ACCRINGTON Stanley have not given up on automatic promotion.

That’s the message from assistant manager Jimmy Bell, despite the Reds picking up two points from a possible 12 to slip to sixth in the table and eight points adrift of third place.

Games in hand against Carlisle and Portsmouth have not had the desired effect on closing the gap, having lost both.

But with third-placed Plymouth to play at home tomorrow, Bell is confident Stanley can still shape their own promotion destiny, and does not feel they have set the bar too high.

“It’s definitely achievable. We still think we’re the best team in the league,” he said.

“Northampton (the runaway leaders) have been on a great run and credit to them. They’ve got that belief and they’ve kicked on.

“They can do us a massive favour by beating all the teams around us, so it is still achievable.

“We’re coming to the business end of the season. Two from 12 is not good enough. We know that, but we’re still in a very good position.”

And Bell believes performances have been good on the whole too.

“We’ve played Northampton twice – they were good here and we got a draw, and we should have beat them there,” he continued.

“We should have done the same away to Plymouth, and we proved that we are good enough when we went to Oxford and beat them there.

“If we beat Plymouth tomorrow we can certainly get ourselves back in it, and would certainly set us up well for Wednesday.”

Stanley play the last of their games in hand at home to Wycombe.

And in these back-to-back home games Bell has urged the players to prove a 3-1 humbling by Portsmouth at the Wham Stadium on Tuesday night was a one-off in their so-far impressive season.

“We never turned up from the start until half-time, and the game was over as a contest by then,” said Bell.

“Everything that we’d worked on never came off and we had too many players who weren’t at it against team who played as though their lives depended on it.

“When you carry two or three players in a match you get punished, and that’s exactly what happened.

“We haven’t performed like that this season so it has to be a blip and we have to make sure it was a blip and bounce back.

“The players should want to put things right, especially in front of our fans, because that hurt."