ACCRINGTON Stanley manager John Coleman has set his side a target of winning five of their last seven games.

The Reds missed the chance to extend their lead at the top of the Conference table to 14 points after suffering their first defeat in 21 outings at struggling Southport on Tuesday night.

Stanley face a tough trip to in-form York City tomorrow. And their task has been made even more difficult because of a depleted defence.

Leam Richardson serves the second of a four-match ban following his second consecutive red card against Hereford last weekend, while Robbie Williams starts his suspension after being the fourth player to be dismissed in as many games for his foul on Steve Daly in the midweek defeat.

Full back Peter Cavanagh and central defender Andy Tretton have been sidelined with injury in recent weeks, leaving just Phil Edwards, Michael Welch and Danny Ventre as the only fit and available defenders - although Cavanagh could be in line for a comeback.

But Coleman admits he has faith in his squad to recover from the setback of picking up only two from a possible nine points in the last two weeks, despite being short on numbers.

"I'm confident in the squad I've got and in my own ability to motivate the players and we'll be going all out to win tomorrow," insisted Coleman.

"I was quite happy with the performance (on Tuesday), there were just a couple of silly mistakes and once or twice things went against us.

"The lads worked really hard. If you look at what Rob Elliot's had to do in the game it's very little but, unfortunately, Southport have got two goals.

"They probably played better last week against Hereford to be fair to them and didn't get anything out of it.

"I've said all along they were due a slice of luck and maybe they got a little bit of it on Tuesday.

"Southport probably had 15 chances against Hereford and scored one then probably had three against us on Tuesday night and scored two. It doesn't make sense."

He added: "I don't think we'll concede another like the first goal. You can't legislate for it and Rob's sick.

"I was too far away to see (the sending off offence), but we kicked in for the second half with 10 men.

"We had a lot of the ball and I'm really sick we didn't score because we had a couple of good chances and on another day they go in.

"Their keeper made a couple of great saves and Ian (Craney) was sick that he missed the penalty.

"I'm just really devastated because I wanted to keep the record going of scoring in every game, and that's sickened me to be honest."

Stanley's disciplinary record is also giving Coleman cause for concern.

"We've got to eliminate the silly mistakes that we make," he said.

"It's unbelieveable that you can go 30-odd games and only get one man sent off, and then you get four in four.

"Things like that just go against you. You have a little bit of bad luck along the way but we're still in a healthy position.

"We have to get our heads down now and maybe this will shut up all the people that have been saying we've won the league for the last month.

"Nobody in the club has been saying it, just everyone else around us. So from now one we'll just get on with the job ourselves and won't speak to anyone about it."

He added: "That's the end of the 20-game unbeaten run and we've got to start again.

"We need to win five games and we need to get them won so we're not hanging on for the last couple of games.

"We have to knuckle down and hope Hereford drop a couple of points along the way to give us a lift."