John Coleman is expecting tomorrow’s game with high flying Shrewsbury to be a real test for his team but is confident that the Reds have enough to send their visitors home empty handed.

A week after watching Stanley defeat league leaders Burton Albion at the Store First Stadium the manager is preparing his players for another showdown with a promotion chasing side.

The aim for Coleman and his side is to bounce back from the weekend defeat at Luton but he knows that will be easier said than done.

“It’s not going to be an easy game against Shrewsbury because they’re one of the best teams in the league,” he said. “They’ve got a good manager in Micky Mellon and they’ve got the financial clout behind them. You only have to see that they went out and spent a lot of money on a striker [Tyrone Barnett] a few weeks ago. We know it’s going to be tough but we also know that we have got tough players and we have players who really want to compete in these games. I’m looking forward to it.

“Micky has done really well and he has assembled a great squad there. I watched them a few weeks ago against Tranmere and they were possibly unfortunate to lose that game but, as we know, you sometimes don’t get what you deserve. You have to take your hat off to Tranmere because they came with a game plan and adopted it really well and deserved to win the game in the end. We have to hope that what we try and do is enough to get us a win.

The Reds were unbeaten in four before their trip to Kenilworth Road and are now looking to start a new run.

To do that, Coleman knows it’s about achieving the right balance in his side.

“We’ve always tried to be attacking,” he explained. “We do work a lot on the defence and it’s not as though we’re negligent about our defending. We’re always trying to improve. We do realise that, at the times when we have a run of good defensive performances, we generally get the results to go with it. But we do feel that our best chance of winning games is to score goals.

“I appreciate that, when you are a fan of a football team, the first thing you want to do is win so that is the first thing that entertains you. The style of football we play can lend itself to excite people and make them want to watch what we play. We’re not daft enough to know that that’s going to be based around trying to win games of football as well, but we haven’t done badly in the last couple of weeks, so we’ll stick at it and see where it takes us.”