Coley looks to avoid a Shaker quaker (From This Is Lancashire)

Coley looks to avoid a Shaker quaker

8:40am Monday 28th December 2009

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ACCRINGTON Stanley boss John Coleman goes into this afternoon’s home game against Bury knowing that the Boxing Day victory at Morecambe has given his players real belief that they can make the play-offs this season.

Stanley climbed to ninth with a game in hand after their impressive 2-1 win at play-off rivals Morecambe, and victory in today’s 3pm kick-off against 11th-placed Bury at the Crown Ground could potentially put them in the top seven for the first time since August 2008.

Coleman’s side have now won their last four league games – their best run since winning promotion to the Football League – and their play-off challenge comes despite finding themselves in the relegation zone in the early weeks of the season.

“The lads know what we’ve got in that dressing room,” said the boss about the confidence now flowing around the club, demonstrated by the animated celebrations after the final whistle at Morecambe.

“They know that they’ve got good players around them and they know that they’ve seen every team in the league and possibly the only team to fear is ourselves.

“I’d love to be playing some of the games we played early on in the season again because we had a couple of lacklustre games when we weren’t in this zone.

“And I’m hoping next time around – against the likes of Northampton, Hereford and Aldershot – they’ll see a different Accrington.”

Bury boss Alan Knill was at Christie Park to watch Stanley on Boxing Day, with the Shakers’ game postponed.

They have not played for two-and-a-half weeks but have lost both previous games to Stanley this season.

“We’ve got a massive game against Bury now,” said Coleman.

“Obviously they’ve had a long break since they last played so it’s a little bit unfair that we’re playing two days later.

“They should be quite fresh but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

Coleman was remaining tight-lipped over whether he might introduce some fresh legs to his starting line-up, with the likes of Darran Kempson, Michael Symes and Luke Joyce also in danger of missing the FA Cup third round tie against Gillingham if they pick up a fifth booking of the season.

The boss will have no natural cover for Kempson against Gillingham, with on-loan Johnny Flynn cup tied, so he could opt to start the Blackburn centre half today in the final game of his loan – as he did to protect Kempson from suspension before the cup replay at Barnet earlier in the month.

But Coleman will be reluctant to make changes for the sake of it after being impressed with the performance at Morecambe, when he described the experience of facing club legend Paul Mullin for the first time as ‘odd’.

“We played really well for long periods,” he said.

“Give them their due, they threw the kitchen sink at us with 20 minutes to go and with a little bit of luck here and there we managed to see it out.

“But the chances we made prior to that, we could have won two games.”

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