All-out attack the way forward for Coleman’s men
AHEAD of Saturday’s defeat by fellow play-off hopefuls Crawley Town, John Coleman had called on his side to go all out attack when the sides met at the Wham Stadium on Saturday.
Both teams went into the game on 46 points – two points outside the top seven – and Stanley’s home record had been relatively strong this season with nine league wins.
However, Coleman was aware his side hadn’t turned on the style going forward in recent games and was hoping they would be on the front foot from the off on Saturday.
“Crawley are a decent side, I know their manager Scott Lindsey. He is a nice lad, a good footballing person and his team play some attractive football.
“It will be two teams who are trying to attack which is good.
“You have to be on the front foot, particularly at home. The fans expect us to be gung-ho, I expect us to be gung-ho, but it’s getting the players on the pitch to do it.
“While you can’t fault their effort, we just need a little bit more guile, more quality to be shown on a regular basis, more intensity in the final third and you need luck. Add all them together and you have a chance.”
Just three points separated seventh place from 16th in a tightly packed league ahead of the weekend, but the 1-0 loss means the Reds are six points off the play-off pace now. Still, they have games in hand on a couple of sides above them and will not consider their race run.
“Lots of teams will feel they have a chance of the Play-Offs,” continued Coleman.
“It’s just mini-runs teams get on, you get on them and it’s how long you can stay on them to get yourself into a position.
“Barrow went on an unbelievably good run, got themselves into the automatics, then just dropped off a little bit.
“Harrogate went on an unbelievable run, got themselves into the PlayOffs, had a little bit of a stutter but have responded well.
“Morecambe have been on a cracking run. We had a mini-run where we won four on spin earlier this season and it’s as if loads of people want to get in Play-Offs and promoted but no one wants to do anything about it.
“It feels like we have been a floating ball inbetween 13th and 10th, we keep floating there no matter what the result is.
“We have got to try and get a couple of wins and get out of the vacuum we are in and go up rather than down.
“We just want to get better, we have to be offensively better and that’s what we have concentrated on this week.”
It’s bad news for captain Seamus Conneely who is out with an abductor tear and could be absent for four to six weeks.
Korede Adedoyin started Saturday’s game on the bench and came on as a second half replacement for Lewis Tricket while Matt Lowe is ‘not a million miles away’.
Sean McConville went to see a specialist last week and could be back in full training this week while Shaun Whalley is a week or two away.
Norwich loan defender Brad Hills sat out the first of a four-game suspension after getting sent off at Colchester in the 1-1 draw.