JOHN Coleman believes his Accrington Stanley squad can still be a force in League Two and is backing them to end a run of three successive league defeats at Hartlepool United tonight.

Saturday’s 1-0 reverse at home to Stevenage means the Reds have slipped to 15th - just three points above the bottom two.

MORE TOP STORIES:

But equally Stanley remain just four points off the play-off places in what is a very congested table.

And Coleman wants his side to recover from their blip with three points in the north east tonight.

“I think we have a good squad with good players,” said the Reds boss.

“We know that wherever we go we are capable of playing well and the players will want to put right what happened on Saturday, I know they will, and we have to give them the opportunity to do so.

“I don’t need to tell the players. They’re self motivating. They’d sooner be playing and putting it right than training.”

The Reds have struggled for goals in recent weeks but Coleman insists his side will continue to play in a positive and expansive manner despite a run of just one win in eight league games.

“You’ve got to be positive,” said Coleman who will be without the suspended Matty Pearson tonight. “There’s no point going into a game with a negative frame of mind. We’ve got to believe we can win because we can win.

“There are a lot of positives from Saturday, in the first half I thought it was the best we’ve played at home all season and it was just disappointing we couldn’t keep it up in the second half.

“You can look at the weather or the pitch or whatever but it’s not about excuses, we have a way of playing that is very effective when we get it right and we just need to add goals. There are a lot of games still to be played and points still to be won and the way to do that is to go out there in a positive frame of mind.

“We’ve had chances and possibly been a little bit wasteful at times but we have to keep batting away and keep putting ourselves into the situations.

“We’ve got a great week coming up with Hartlepool away and Yeovil at home and we’ll be doing our very best to take maximum points from the week.”