ACCRINGTON Stanley manager John Coleman believes that a lot of tiredness is in the mind as his players are nearing the end of the busy Christmas period.

The Reds played two quick fire matches away at Blackpool and at home to Burton Albion, both resulting in three points and a clean sheet.

Up next is the visit of Rochdale to the Wham Stadium on New Year’s Day.

“A lot of tiredness is mental and if you tell people they’re tired then they’ll feel it,” said Coleman.

“If you tell someone he’s fresh as a daisy then I think he’ll respond.

“They work hard for each other, covering each other and you’ve just got to keep doing that and see how far it takes you. Teams won’t want to come here when we’re playing that way.

“When we’re playing on the front foot and we’ve got the crowd. Our crowd was fantastic again today, they were boisterous and noisy.

“It becomes a perfect match; the players play on the front and they want to pass the ball.

“When you get into that zone you want to turn it on for as long as possible.”

Stanley went into the half-time break of the Burton game a goal up, but Burton weren’t without chances to score themselves.

“There were little areas that we knew we had to improve on,” added Coleman.

“We hit a flat spot after about half an hour into the game and we let them back into it and then we had to weather a bit of a storm in the first period of the second half.

“After that, I thought we defended really well, moved the ball well, passed it well. Could have had more but we can’t be greedy with it.

“That’s a plus goal difference now. As I’ve been saying for the last four or five weeks, our players have been working really hard and they’ve ran themselves into the ground again today.

“They had a tough game against Blackpool, big ask them to do it again, but they’ve upped the stakes and run harder today.

“We knew it was going to be difficult against Burton, they’re a good side and they’ve been scoring goals.

“To shut them out is a feather in the cap for our defenders and for the whole team.

“You can just see the way the team was working together, even the ones who want to come on as subs, the whole squad is together, and you can see that every day.

“We’ve hit a bit of a run now, I’ve said the hard part was getting on it, but we are on it now and we’ve just got to try and work hard to maintain it.”

Sean McConville started his first game since his shoulder injury and scored the first goal against Burton after talking about his frustrations with not starting in the win at Blackpool.

“Sean (McConville) by his own admission was annoyed that he didn’t start the game against Blackpool, but they’re the calls you have to make,” Coleman added.

“We’ve seen today that Ben (Barclay) came in against Blackpool and did really well and Seamus (Conneely) was fit again but Ben retained his place.

“Joe (Pritchard) hasn’t done a great deal wrong. We need all our players wanting to take that shirt and keep hold of it for as long as possible.

“People might have misconceptions that there is favouritism, but there’s not.

“What we’ve got now is a really healthy squad and if I had to make seven changes then I could do it and it’s testament to how hard the lads have worked.”