MANAGER of the month; unbeaten in 10 games; three points clear at the top of the Nationwide Conference; scoring in every match so far this season - John Coleman has a lot to smile about.

But there is still a steely resilience in the Accrington Stanley manager's eye as he makes his assessments of the coming year.

You sense, immediately, there is much work still for him and his troops to do. And he isn't prepared to have his eye taken off the ball for a second and suffer for distractions.

"It's nothing to do with me, as such," said Coleman of the December award he shares with new Crawley Town boss John Hollins.

"It's just a little bit of an accolade for the players for going unbeaten last month.

"But it will count for nothing if we don't get what we want at the end of the season.

"I would prefer to get those awards in March and April because, if you can pick them up at that time, you have a good chance of winning the league."

Currently, Coleman harbours a deep frustration that, while unbeaten since being dumped out of the FA Cup by Conference North side Worcester City in October, they have gone two games without a win. Both encounters coming against Halifax with a postponement of the trip to Southport in between.

But he is desperate to set the record straight at Canvey Island tomorrow (kick-off 3pm).

"The last time we lost I was on the bench so we quickly got me out of the squad and we haven't looked back," Coleman quipped, before adding, more seriously: "It's nice to be unbeaten but I would much rather have won one and lost one against Halifax because we would have been a point further on.

"Although being unbeaten breeds confidence, if you pick up too many draws eventually it's going to cost you.

"We haven't won for two games now and we have to try to get back on the winning track. That's got to start tomorrow hopefully.

"I'm disappointed that we didn't win at least one game over Christmas because that would have given us a bit more of a buffer than what we've already got.

"We don't want to get into a situation where we want to rely on other teams slipping up for us to be successful. We want to keep things in our own hands.

"You can't start to say you can afford to lose game. We can't afford to drop our guard. We have to keep going from now until the end of the season and hopefully we'll get what we want."

Coleman knows they face a stern task from Canvey Island tomorrow, in what will be only their second away game since their November win over then leaders Grays Athletic, which proved to be the catalyst for their current run of form.

"We've had some good games against Canvey. We performed particularly well there last year but they've had two good wins and a not-so-good result sandwiched in between those," he said.

"But they are a good side and I'm expecting a really tough game."

Steve Jagielka is a doubt for tomorrow after missing part of training this week with a slight knee injury.