John Coleman is currently the manager of Accrington Stanley and he has a long history in the non-league structure.

Born in 1962, Coleman first started playing for Kirkby Town and he also had spells at Burscough and Marine before joining Southport. He scored a fairly decent 49 goals in 89 appearances for the Merseyside club and is deemed as a club legend by their fans. Spells at Runcorn, Macclesfield Town, Rhyl, Witton Albion, Morecambe and Ashton United followed.

He is one of the most prolific strikers in history, scoring over 500 goals in his twenty year career and it's surprisingly that no League club ever took a punt with him. His success saw him called up the England National Game XI and he received player of the season at the majority of the clubs that he represented.

Whilst at Ashton United, he became the club's player-manager. He did however fail to win promotion with them before becoming the manager at Accrington Stanley in 1999. In his 9 years at the club, he has managed 330 games and losing a hefty chunk of the games he has had in the Football League, he boasts a winning record of 43.93%.

Coleman has overseen three title winning seasons and Accrington and he personally entered the League structure for the first time in the 2006/7 season. His record does generally speak for itself and it arguable makes him one of the best men to manage a non-league side.

However, since coming into the League, he has proved unpopular with a section of Accrington supporters. Just before Lincoln were due to play there in the 2006/7 season, a fan had sprayed "Coleman Out" onto the pitch in an attempt to get his message across. However, the rest of the pitch around that specific location meant that the message could not been seen.

Coleman also has gained a bit of a reputation of a deluded manager in the past two years. He has often stated that his side have dominated games in which they didn't manage to have a shot.