STANLEY manager James Beattie reckons 52 points will be enough for the Reds to ensure they spend a ninth straight season in the Football League.

Stanley bounced back from successive defeats at Portsmouth and Burton to pick up four points over the last week, upsetting League 2 leaders Chesterfield last Saturday before drawing 0-0 with Hartlepool on Tuesday night.

That leaves the Reds fourth-bottom but the bottom two – Northampton and Torquay – both managed to win in midweek so Stanley are four points above the relegation zone ahead of this Saturday's trip to Rochdale.

“It’s all about what we do,” said Beattie. “We’re in a position at the moment where we’re in charge of our own destiny.

“If the results do or don’t go our way, we’re just concentrating on what we do, and win, lose or draw, it’s all about the boys.

“We’re making our way to a magical number. I think that number will be about 52 points this year because the league’s ridiculously tight.

“Even with the win on Saturday, we didn’t move with other results going how they did – so it’s a good job we did win! It’s another little step, another brick in the wall.”

With Stanley now on 41 points with 11 games left, they would need to average a point a game during the run-in. Dagenham & Redbridge stayed up with 51 points last term while Stanley finished on 54.

“Barring the start we had, when we went on our winless run, we’ve averaged just under two points a game so if we can maintain that average we’ll be all right,” Beattie added.

“There’s a dogged determination about us now and we’re hard to beat, which is in contrast to what we were like at the start of the season.”

Saturday’s thriller was always going to be a tough act to follow but Stanley had the better of Tuesday night’s stalemate.

“It’s a clean sheet, the lads battled really hard and put in a gutsy performance,” said Beattie. “It wasn’t a spectacular game by any stretch of the imagination but we’re resilient.

“We were quite pleased with a point, we just needed a bit more quality to get us all three.”