JOHN Coleman isn't looking for excuses for his team's lack of goalscoring in recent times, but the Stanley boss has recognised training on artificial grass is not helpful.

Plans were in place in the summer for Stanley to train on grass for the season, but the quality of the pitches have not materialised as they would have hoped.

Stanley have gone over eight hours without finding the back of the net and are hoping to end that run at home to Bolton Wanderers on Saturday.

"The one thing that people say about us is that we don’t have the biggest budget or that we should historically struggle," said Coleman.

"It’s nothing to do with budgets, the big problem that we have is we train on a surface every day and we play on a different one on a Saturday and that is just the way it is – it’s no one’s fault.

"If you want an excuse, then that is the biggest excuse that you can have and that’s what’s making our task difficult.

"You can either complain about it, which I’m sure the players do amongst themselves, but they don’t overly to me, or you get on with it. "The alternative is we don’t train, or we just do fitness. As it stands now, that’s what we have to do.

"When you practise striking a ball and you’re stranding on a totally different surface, it’s difficult.

"It’s like going to play Wimbledon but practising on clay for a month before. it’s an alien surface."

The Reds admits he was down beat about having to train his players on the plastic surface again, but he's had to lift himself for the sake of his players.

"You often get the phrase ‘who motivates the motivator?’ I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t hurt me because it has," added the Stanley boss.

"I can’t let myself get too down; I’ve got to deal with what I’ve got like we always have.

"We won the league a couple of years ago training on plastic, so you can read whatever you want into it.

"Plans were put in place to get us training on grass, but the condition of the pitch didn’t materialise.

"That’s the situation that we’re in, but we have to plough through it and find a way to get it right. If it means training on plastic, then that’s what we’ll do.

It’s quite common when the weather’s bad. I’d have to say we could be the only professional team that’s training on plastic every day."