ACCRINGTON Stanley boss John Coleman insists he is going back to Rochdale tomorrow with no additional agenda other than to get the win he always wants.

The 56-year-old returns to the side he left his first spell as Reds boss to join in January 2012.

It was an ill-fated 12 months in the end, with Dale relegated back to League Two, while Coleman and his assistant, Jimmy Bell, were sacked the following January.

Coleman says he has grown as a manager and a person because of his experience, and bears no grudges. But he admitted that, while he had nothing to prove, there was an element of pride at stake on his return to Spotland in the opposition dugout.

“People will possibly make more of it than I will about going back to Rochdale, it’s just another game for me,” Coleman said.

“It would be nice to win. But if you want to win 100 per cent of the time you can’t drop that or exceed that.

“I wanted to win against Blackpool the other week in the Checkatrade Trophy when we were already through. I won’t want to win against Rochdale any more or less than what I wanted to win against Colchester in the FA Cup.

“That’s the way I am, I want to win games of football.

“Obviously, for your own pride I think everyone’s seeking a bit of validation aren’t they, but I don’t think I’ve got anything to prove to anybody and I don’t think Jimmy’s got anything to prove to anybody.”

Of his Rochdale tenure, Coleman added: “I’ve learnt from going there. I think it made me a better manager, possibly a better person as well.

“I learnt that you can’t always impose the way you want to play as quickly as you want, you can’t always impress your ethos on people. They have to get to know you and work with you, they have to learn to trust you and learn to like you to a certain extent, and that takes time.

“Building relationships takes time and I was possibly a bit too keen to stamp my blueprint and how I thought I could replicate what I did at Accrington, and possibly that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe I should have taken more of what was available at Rochdale and ran with that. Or maybe brought in more of my own players quicker.

“Possibly at the time I wasn’t ready for Rochdale and I don’t think Rochdale were ready for me. But you can look back with regret or you can move forward, and you don’t get anything for dwelling on the past.”

“You can’t change people’s perception. The odds are we were going to go down anyway when I took over, and we had a couple of turning points, Walsall equalising with five seconds to go against us at home after we’d been 2-0 down and got 3-2. I think that was a body blow to us. Missing a penalty against Sheffield Wednesday when we’d dominated most of the game. Little points that were key in us going down.

“I don’t think we did that badly in League Two before I left. We did turn in some good performances, maybe not as consistent as I’d have liked. But generally me and Jimmy get teams going towards the end of the season and we were only a couple of points outside of the play-offs.”

Coleman left Stanley for Spotland to test himself at a higher level. Now he has got Stanley there on a level playing field.

“Rochdale were a step up from Accrington at the time, they were a better run club with better resources, better facilities,” he said.

“We’re catching them up, that’s for sure.”