Stanley manager James Beattie refused to be too critical of his players despite admitting they were below-par during last Saturday's 1-0 defeat by Northampton.

While the visitors gave their survival hopes a boost with a crucial win, the Reds’ boss stressed that Stanley shouldn’t beat themselves up about it given where the two sides are in the table.

“We haven’t put in a performance like that for I don’t know how many weeks,” said Beattie.

“If we win there’s no major highs and if we lose there’s no major lows, so I think we’ve got to make that clear straight away.

“Our position now is a lot more rosy than the position we found ourselves in earlier in the season. I would rather be sat in our dressing room than Northampton’s! They’re still six points below us.”

Beattie said after the previous week’s win at Exeter that the recent run of games had caught up with his players and again he felt fatigue was a factor.

He also rued the early defensive mix-up between Marcus Bettinelli and Adam Buxton which allowed Chris Hackett to nip in and score the game’s only goal in the sixth minute.

“We weren’t at the races,” Beattie added. “The lads looked leggy and we weren’t getting to the second balls. Things just didn’t fall for us, for one reason or another.

“I don’t think Northampton really created that much that we didn’t gift them. They could have had three goals off our mistakes.

“How he scored from that angle I don’t know. To me it seemed to be impossible but he got it in.

“As I’ve said before, you can’t legislate for mistakes like that.

“You can train all you want but a mix-up like that is just something that happens, and I don’t think we got to grips with the game after that. We were getting frustrated and the decisions we were making weren’t as good as the ones we’ve been making in recent weeks.

“The standard of the game as a whole wasn’t particularly good. We’d have expected to get something from the game but it wasn’t to be and we’re still six points clear of the relegation zone.”