Accrington Stanley boss John Coleman wants his side to embrace being favourites in games after seeing them go down 1-0 against Gillingham at the Wham Stadium on Saturday.

The Reds dropped out of the play-off places as a result after a previous good run of just one loss in 11 League One games.

Gills captain Kyle Dempsey scored the only goal of the game in the first minute of added time in the first half, getting on the end of Alex MacDonald’s cutback and curling the ball home from the edge of the area.

MacDonald forced a couple of saves out of Stanley goalkeeper Nathan Baxter, while Michael Nottingham thumped a header against the crossbar after 48 minutes for the home side.

There was a grandstand finish as Gills keeper Jack Bonham produced a superb save in the 90th minute to keep out Colby Bishop as Gillingham held on.

“We were nowhere near good enough, I take my hat off to Gillingham, they were the better team in the first half, they took the game to us and it was no surprise when they scored,” Coleman said.

“In the second half, they barely troubled us, it was one-way traffic and we missed three good chances. Those are the fine lines.

“We have got into a rut of when we are favourites to win games we don’t win them, and we need to shake that tag off as it will damage us.

“We didn’t attack like we should, we looked disjointed, we weren’t aggressive enough.

“Everyone was throwing bouquets at us after we beat Charlton on television but Gillingham are as good as anybody in this league and we seemed to think we could coast.

“You can’t coast through games, you get punished and we did.”