JOHN Coleman is expecting Accrington Stanley to give as good as they get tonight as they face a Hartlepool side desperate for points to survive in the Football League.

Pools looked dead and buried a month ago but new boss Ronnie Moore has engineered a run of four successive wins which has catapulted them out of the relegation zone.

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But they are now winless in their last three and are only one point and one place above the drop zone.

Coleman expects Hartlepool to come at Stanley but he thinks that could well help his side as well.

“I expect a really tough game,” he said. “It will be a good atmosphere and I expect them to throw the kitchen sink at us.

“When we have games like that we normally give as good as we get.

“I’m hoping we go toe-to-toe with them and come out winners.”

Hartlepool’s revival has come as a surprise to a lot of observers, but not Coleman.

“Not for me it hasn’t been,” he said. “We beat them 3-1 at home, Ronnie wasn’t the manager then, but it was never a 3-1, they were well in the game.

“They’ve got good players. They should have, they’re a big club.

“Ronnie has galvanised them and got them going again and got them to believe they can stay up. That’s half the battle.

“Players are going out expecting to win and sometimes players go out expecting to get beat, and you normally get what you expect.

“He’s done well to turn the atmosphere and the attitude around.

“I get on well with Ronnie and I’m sure we’ll have a glass of wine in his office at the game, but I’ll be trying to beat him before then.”

With a five-point gap to the team fourth from bottom the battle to survive looks like a three horse race between Hartlepool, Tranmere and Cheltenham, and Coleman promised that the Reds will be doing their best to secure all three points, with their own survival still not mathematically secured.

“We want to finish the season on a high, we owe it ourselves and the teams around Hartlepool to win the game,” he said.