ACCRINGTON Stanley boss John Coleman would refuse the safety of a play-off place if it was offered to him now as he insists his Reds side are 'one of the best three teams in the league'.

Coleman has no desire to settle for a top seven finish and continues to set his sights on automatic promotion this season.

Victory over Wycombe at the Wham Stadium tonight would close the gap on Plymouth in third to just two points. But if Gareth Ainsworth's side were to leave with maximum points then Stanley would have just a four point cushion on the play-off chasing teams below them.

But asked if he would settle for a place in the play-offs now, Coleman said: "No chance.

"It’s not a case of that’s the mentality you’ve got to have, that you wouldn’t stick, it’s that we firmly believe we’re one of the best three teams in the league, and we’ve said that from day one, so why change now?"

While Northampton have surged 14 points clear at the top of League Two, the rest of the division is tightly bunched, with all of the top half still in with a realistic shout of a play-off place.

“I still think there’s six or seven teams who have a realistic aim of the automatic promotion spots," said Coleman.

“If anyone puts on a run of seven or eight games then they’ve got a great chance of going up automatically.

“Nobody has yet reached the levels that Northampton have reached but that doesn’t mean that nobody can."

Prior to a run of three successive home games against teams battling for promotion Coleman was keen to see Stanley secure six points, a target they will hit with victory over the Chairboys, having bounced back from defeat to Portsmouth with victory over Plymouth.

“Physiologically it was a massive boost for us," Coleman said of the dramatic late win against the Pilgrims.

"You couldn’t dress it up, we’d taken two points from 12 prior to that and our performances hadn't merited that.

"If we’d have gone another game with playing well and not winning there might have been a few thoughts of ‘what have we got to do here’ and ‘it’s not going to be our season’.

"So that got our season back on track."

It also showed that a Reds squad short of experience in promotion battles are holding their nerve as the season reaches the business end.

"They’re playing with a sense of fun and when you do that fear can quickly go out of the window," said Coleman.

"I do think we’ve had a couple of games where we’ve looked, not scared, but edgy and tight, notably both Carlisle games, where we didn’t seem right, and then the Portsmouth game.

"The tension has got the better of them on occasions."