ACCRINGTON Stanley boss John Coleman wants the Reds to aim higher despite being on the brink of celebrating a 10th consecutive season in the Football League.

Although having the lowest budget and smallest average attendance in the league the club continue to defy the odds and they need just one more point to be guaranteed of survival this season.

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While Coleman, who returned to the Store First Stadium in September having previously been in charge for the first five and a half seasons in the league, is proud of the club’s achievement, he is convinced there is more to come.

“It is a very difficult division,” he said. “Big teams go out of this league, you only have to look at Luton and Bristol Rovers for that.

“That’s testament to how well we’ve done over the years, in what is a very difficult league.

“Everybody who works behind the scenes and the previous incumbents here should take a great deal of credit for that.

“We’ve got to get away from the fact that that’s just our aim, to stay in the league. We’ve got to go and try and threaten things.

“We’ve had a taste of the play-offs, when I left we were on the cusp of the play-offs. That’s where you want to be.

“You don’t want to be fighting at the bottom. You’ve got to aim high and play for things. You don’t just want to be surviving every year, it’s living just to exist and breathe, and you don’t want to do that, you want to have fun.”

Coleman had initially targeted a play-off push when he returned to the club but a run of five consecutive defeats in January and February put paid to that challenge.

“I think we’ve aimed high in the past,” said the Reds boss.

“The margins are very fine, we could easily have been threatening the play-offs.

“There are a lot of teams who are very similar in the league and you’ve got to hope that one year it’s going to be your time where things just fall in your favour.

“We’ve got the players here, if we can make strong additions, to challenge.”

A new contract has been offered to the in-form Piero Mingoia and Coleman will have decisions to make on most of his squad between now and the end of the season, with only two of the 11 players who started Saturday’s draw at Cambridge under contract for next season.

The final four games are a chance for those players to impress, although Coleman admits that one good performance won’t necessarily be enough to earn a new deal.

“It’s not going to happen on one game,” he said. “It happens over seeing them in training and seeing what they do on the pitch.

“We have to be realistic with what we offer people in terms of what we’ve got to play with. We can’t stretch the club’s finances beyond the limit. That’s key to trying to attract a squad for next season that can compete.”