JOHN Coleman takes his Accrington Stanley side on the road for the first time in League One, looking for their first points of the new season, and a new strike partnership.

Kayden Jackson’s club record move to Ipswich has left a vacancy alongside Billy Kee for tomorrow’s trip to Bristol Rovers.

But after landing Offrande Zanzala on a permanent deal from Derby County last week, and re-signing experienced striker Andy Mangan, Coleman is confident he has the options to fill the void.

“We’ve got good players who can come in and take his place,” said the Stanley boss, who is anticipating a tough encounter at the Memorial Stadium, particularly with Bristol Rovers also looking to bounce back from an opening day defeat.

Stanley went down 2-0 in their debut League One clash, at home to Gillingham, last weekend, with The Gas losing 2-1 away to Peterborough.

“It will be a tough game. They’re the same as us on no points after the first game. I’ve watched their game against Peterborough a couple of times and there’s not a lot in it to be fair,” Coleman added.

“They conceded after two minutes, which is always a body blow. But they have got good players and if we’re not at our best they can hurt us. But if we are at our best, we can hurt them.

“They have a good manager and they’ve got good players and we’ve got to formulate a way of beating them, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing at the moment.

“Every game you play is tough and every game you play can hinge on certain rubs of the green or a bounce of the ball going your way or a decision here and there going your way.

“But if you have a way of playing and you stick to it and you impose it on the opposition you can generally have more success than failure. We had that a lot last year and hopefully we’ll get back to that.”

Coleman said they would have to learn quickly from defeat to Gillingham, and added: “We have to explore different options of how we’re going to deal with other teams’ personnel and formations.

“I think people over analyse formations, I think it’s down to how players handle the ball and how committed they are in the game. We were a little bit below par on Saturday, and for those set of lads, who I’ve had a long time now, there haven’t been too many times when I could say they were below par.”