ACCRINGTON Stanley boss John Coleman admits Shay McCartan is knocking on the door of a first team return, after his equaliser from the bench made him the club’s top scorer outright this season, despite limited starts.

The young Irishman, who has made half of his 26 appearances from the bench, was level-pegging with Piero Mingoia and James Gray with five goals ahead of the Reds’ Friday night home game with Cheltenham Town.

MORE TOP STORIES:

But introduced in the second half as Stanley trailed 1-0, McCartan had been on the pitch less than five minutes when he levelled to make it three games unbeaten.

The former Burnley striker was signed by James Beattie in the summer of 2013, but did not start a game this season until October, shortly after Coleman returned for a second spell in charge.

He admits he has grown in confidence. Now Coleman hopes that new-found verve will translate into consistency.

“The biggest way of breeding confidence in strikers is scoring goals, and it will have done him good to see that goal hit the net,” said the Stanley boss, who when asked if McCartan was pushing for a place added: “He will be.

“On his day he’s breathtaking. He’s shown that with some of the goals he’s scored and some of the play he’s made. But he has to do it on a more consistent basis and he has to score goals more consistently.

“We believe in him and his ability. When any player has that they tend to play better when they think that the manager likes the way they play and they’re not trying to change the game to please the manager.

“If the manager is already happy with the way he plays he can be confident and comfortable in playing his own game, and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do with Shay.”

McCartan, 20, will hope to be restored to the line-up tonight, when Stanley entertain League Two leaders Burton Albion in their re-arranged game following postponement on December 28.

The game was originally scheduled for December 28 but was called off due to a frozen pitch.

Since then the Reds have been on a five-game losing streak, re-signed Terry Gornell and arrested the slump with back-to-back wins against Oxford United and Southend.

“We haven’t got that many injuries and we’ve added Terry to the squad which gives us a different dimension. But I’d have been just as keen to play them then as I am now,” said Coleman, who was pleased to stay unbeaten against Cheltenham but frustrated with the draw.

“Every time we play at home we’ve got to believe we can win and we’ve got to go out and try to win.”

Meanwhile, Nicky Hunt is ruled out tonight as he waits for the results of a scan following injury on Friday.

“Every time we play away we try to win so it doesn’t alter, but we’ve got to try to enthuse the fans to get behind us.

“The fans who came on Friday were great and in the main this season they’ve been fantastic.

“We’ve just got to hope we give them something to sing about.

“The league itself is very funny. I watched Tranmere against Shrewsbury on Saturday – you could see the game change on the basis of a goal. It’s something that’s been evident this season when we’ve watched League Two.

“It’s the teams who make the least mistakes who generally win the games, so we’ve just got to try to eliminate the mistakes.”