STANLEY boss John Coleman is putting education first at the Wham Stadium as he looks for his side to keep improving.

The Reds have made a strong start to life in League One following their title success last season and Coleman is instilling a self-learning approach within his squad.

Stanley travel to Blackpool this weekend looking for a third straight away league win.

The Reds sit eighth ahead of the derby trip, having collected seven points from four games but Coleman is still seeking improvement, and has long felt a collective effort from players and staff is the answer.

“It should be an interaction,” the Reds boss said of his coaching approach. “We won’t have all the answers, we are not perfect and we are not all-seeing experts on the field.

“But we have had a lot of experience and we can give them ideas and put them into scenarios and ask them why they made a decision and get them to think about why they made that decision and think is there things they can do better? A lot of times the players will come up with the answers themselves, they don’t need the answers off us.

“And that has to be the way because you can’t freeze the game and blow the whistle and say ‘why are you there’ on a Saturday. You have to be able to think for yourself and that is one of our coaching styles, we try to do that a lot.

“We try to give them ownership of their own learning.”

One such case is young defender Ross Sykes.

The 19-year-old has broken into the first team this season and has started all four league matches so far this term, netting his first goal in the win at Oxford in midweek.

And Coleman believes the centre back is a case in point of a player willing to learn.

“There is still a long way to go with Ross but he is going in the right direction and the more we show him and the more he tries to educate himself with things like decision making then he will have a good career,” he said.

“I am pleased that Ross is getting games under his belt, he will only get better. He is really keen to learn and when they are in that mode you can see them improving on a daily basis.

“A lot of it comes down to decision making and sometimes you have to make mistakes to learn and sometimes as a manager you have to be patient with people who make mistakes and not be knee-jerk and take them out of the side.”

Coleman can point to a track record with improving young centre halves.

“We have had a couple of young centre halves who have come here,” he said.

“Two of them from Burnley, the first was Kevin Long and the first week he came in here you would swear he had never kicked a ball in his life, and that is no disrespect to what he was doing at Burnley, but what he was doing at Burnley compared to what you do at Accrington is two totally different levels.

“We had to get him thinking about how the game is going to get played in League Two which is totally different to the Premier League and the Championship.

“It was similar with Jimmy Dunne. Jimmy had been at Barrow, who again would play a different style of football, and we saw the improvement in him straight away.

“Lloyd Jones from Liverpool was another who was very similar. He came from Under-23s football and was not used to a physical battle and had to learn how to get into a position where he wouldn’t be vulnerable to that physical encounter and how he can improve.

“The improvement in seeing just those three come through is fantastic.

“You get a lot of satisfaction from seeing them grow quite quickly and learn quite quickly and I am not saying they are learning it all from us because they are learning it themselves and at the parent clubs as well, but when you see them being able to educate themselves that is pleasing.”