Town boss Paul Cook and his Accrington counterpart John Coleman go back a very long way and the Blues manager believes the Stanley manager deserves to have been given chances at bigger clubs given his success at the Wham Stadium.

Coleman, 58, has been manager at Accrington since September 2014, making him the fourth longest-serving boss in the top four divisions, having previously had an even longer stint in charge between May 1999 and January 2012.

During those two spells he has won the Northern Premier League Division One title in 1999/00, topped the Northern Premier League in 2002/03, what’s now the National League in 2005/06 and in 2017/18 League Two, before establishing the long-time non-leaguers in League One.

“I've got to be careful what I say because I don't want to be disrespectful to John, but I really feel John should have been given opportunities to manage at bigger clubs at higher levels,” Cook, 54, said.

“I think he's done an amazing job at Accrington, I really do. I think that job is probably taken as a given because they do that well.

“He continually finds new players, Colby Bishop being one tomorrow that we'll walk into. He consistently does it and consistently recruits himself, along with Jimmy Bell and John Doolan, his assistants, and they continually do a fantastic job.

“I've been there with two different clubs in my time, I never went there with Wigan, but I went there with Portsmouth and Chesterfield and lost both times — walked away beaten.

“Accrington is a really solid football club and it's run by a really good chairman, Andy Holt, and there's a lot of good people who work there.

“They’ve probably shrugged off that little club title now, I think they are now seen as a solid League One club and that's great credit to John and everyone at the club.”

Cook played for Coleman at Accrington between 2003 and 2006 but their association goes back much further than that, to their childhoods in Kirkby.

“I played together with John when I was seven years of age,” Cook recalled. “John was a bit older than me, it was in an U11s team. I think I was just six or seven and John was probably 10 or 11 and we've been friends ever since.”

In his pre-match interview with the Stanley official website, Coleman paid tribute to Cook’s father Chris, who died last month and says he told the Town boss that the Blues would be up and running by the time they visited the Wham Stadium.

“It’s difficult for Paul. Chris was a lovely fellow, a gentleman, a great football person in Kirkby where we all grew up and people like that will be sorely missed,” he said.

“One of the beauties of our game is football can be a distraction and can take your mind off things for a bit.

“Paul will find out, as I found out when my dad died, that time can be a healer. His dad will want him to carry on and do well.”

Three of Cook’s staff, Gary Roberts, Franny Jeffers and Ian Craney, also played for Accrington.

“Paul knows all our staff, we know all his staff - probably most of his staff have played for Accrington!” Coleman laughed.

“It’s not a grudge match, so to speak. Historically when we play each other we don’t speak that week although we did do an EFL podcast on Thursday morning.

“What I know is that we won’t play Ipswich, who scored six mid-week, and park the bus. I would never do that, I would never do it to our fans, it’s not in my nature.

“I told Cooky six weeks ago he will get it right for when they play us! They have a good side, probably early on was a good time to play them when they were trying to gel but you play everyone at some point and bring it on.

“I know when we get it right we are a good side. We have let ourselves down the last couple of weeks.

“We have had no luck, we have had two goals on the bounce disallowed Saturday-Tuesday, which everyone can see they are good goals, but you have to keep working hard to make your luck change.

“We will be trying to win the game on Saturday, we will address the defending but you need to score goals to win games and it’s something Oxford did better than us on Tuesday [when Stanley were beaten 5-1].”

Cook says he remembers their exchange differently: “I think there’s debate around that conversation - I told John I'd get it right in six weeks or John told me — we'll debate that.

“I told John Coleman [that] and John wasn’t really happy with it. John frowned on it and said ‘Trust you to maybe have them right when you come to us!’.

“But that was more in the results, the fact that the players would have had time to integrate into the club, we’d had a strong training weeks, the fitness levels will grow naturally with games.

“The harmony of our squad will grow and it has coincided with the results changing in the short-term for the better and obviously we travel with a very strong squad.”

He added: “John is someone I speak to probably three or four times a week, most mornings before training probably half-six, seven o'clock in the morning.

“He's someone I've spoken to over a very long period of time and I think we are both there for each other, and I think we both know that.

“So getting phone calls off John would only be something I'd expect as a given and that support I'd expect as a given as well.”

Regarding Coleman saying he wouldn’t be parking the bus, Cook added: “Listen, John is fiercely competitive and he's fiercely competitive in everything he does. If you ever have a round of golf with John, you won't speak for four hours.

“John doesn't like losing and John, especially at Accrington, has prided himself on getting after teams and making it uncomfortable, and their lads giving everything they've got and I don't see that changing tomorrow.

“I think Accrington will walk onto us, I think they will genuinely want to beat us and I think it will be a really good game.”

Photos: TWTD/Action Images

istanblue added 21:36 - Oct 1 ''Ay Paul, ges a job''
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