ACCRINGTON Stanley have opened talks with Piero Mingoia over a new contract as John Coleman starts planning for next season.

The Reds reached 50 points with victory over Carlisle on Easter Monday and are now all but guaranteed to survive in League Two, with an 11 point cushion over the relegation zone with five games to play,.

The run-in begins with a visit to Cambridge, one place below Stanley in the table, tomorrow.

Monday’s victory ended a run of eight games without a win, but despite the disappointing results Stanley have been buoyed by the form of players such as Mingoia, 23, and 21-year-old Josh Windass, who has another year remaining on his contract.

Coleman would like to take 10 points from the Reds’ final five league games of the season to hit the 60 point mark for the first time since the club made the League Two play-offs in 2010/11, but he also admitted the club have to start planning for next term.

“I’d love to win five games but I’d certainly like to get 60 points,” said Coleman. “Whether that’s achievable or not we don’t know but it would be nice to get there.

“It’s taken us a while to amass those points, perhaps we should have had them earlier. We’ve had three catastrophic runs this season.

“If we could have eliminated one and a half of them we’d be in the play-offs.

“At Christmas I thought we had the makings of a team that could go and challenge really strongly.

“We had horrific luck with goalkeepers, I think that’s probably the main reason we’re not where we should be.”

Windass and Mingoia have scored 12 goals between them this season, and Coleman believes they could form the nucleus of a team capable of challenging the top seven in 2015/16, as long as the former Watford man puts pen to paper on a new deal.

“They’re two good players,” he said. “Piero is out of contract but we are in the process of offering him a new deal and Josh has got another year.

“There’s been other good performances from other players. We’ve got to try and tie them down and get a squad in our mind that we’d like to go with for next season as soon as possible.

“We have to make offers to players to stay or players to bring in, so it would be churlish of us not to use these last five games not to inform that opinion.”

Inconsistency has thwarted Stanley this season. Three times the Reds have gone on runs where they have failed to win for at least five games, only to follow those up with good spells of form.

Eradicating that is something Coleman is keen to work on.

“I think people don’t place enough emphasis on luck at this level of football,” he said. “Games can hinge on decisions, on mistakes, and you can play well and not win games.

“We’re not the only one who that affects, but the better teams, you’re Shrewsbury’s and your Burton’s, have been more consistent, they haven’t made as many mistakes as other teams have and they have punished the oppositions mistakes.

“We’re guilty at both ends of that. We haven’t scored as many goals as what we would have liked and we’ve missed quite a few chances.

“We’ve also conceded a high ratio of goals to shots.

“If you can lower that and be more clinical in the final third, that’s what we will have a big eye on for next season.”