JOHN Coleman feels his Accrington Stanley players have got what it takes to deal with the pressure of the promotion push - because some of them have been here before.

The Reds cemented their position in League Two’s automatic places with Saturday’s 2-0 win away to Coventry City, replacing Wycombe Wanderers in second place after they dropped points with a 1-1 draw at Exeter City.

Stanley have 15 games remaining to at least hold their position, and their nerve.

And Coleman feels the play-off experience of 2015/16 will work in their favour.

“I think the advantage for us is that we have Mark Hughes, Sean McConville, Scott Brown, Seamus Conneely, Billy Kee all go through that so they’ll know what to expect next time around so that experience could help us,” he said.

“I think they’ve been up for (the challenge of getting promoted) from day one. I didn’t get any dissenters when I sat them all down on the first day of pre-season and I told them what I wanted.

“You can see slowly, it’s not becoming my dream any more, it’s becoming their dream and that’s half the battle.”

On paper, momentum should keep going tonight when they entertain Crewe. Stanley have the fourth best home record in the division, with 10 wins from 15, while Crewe are poor on the road, with 12 defeats and only nine points on their travels, and are without a win since New Year’s Day.

But Coleman is too cautious to take statistics for granted.

“It will be a difficult game, like you always expect from any team in our league,” he warned.

“They (Crewe) are quite unpredictable and are capable of beating anybody on their day, and they’ve got good players, and good players who can hurt you. We’ve already felt the brunt of one of the strikers, who played for Carlisle.

“We’re going to have to be at our best every time we play between now and the end of the season if we’re going to get the prize that we want.

“You’ve just got to be careful that you keep their feet on the ground and they don’t just float into this game thinking they can do what they want and not get the process right.

“We want to get the win but you’ve got a route to doing that. There’s a method and we’ve got to concentrate on that.”

“We know how to play. We’ve got a system and the players like it but they’ve got to remember to follow it through, it’s not just going to happen for you.”