THEY have dealt with one fiasco after another, yet always kept Accrington Stanley on the rise. Few management duos are more deserving of long-term deals than John Coleman and Jimmy Bell.

The pair have a record that is simply unique – but nothing has ever been easy.

Coleman and Bell took over at the Crown Ground in May 1999 with Stanley in the UniBond First Division and remarkably their league position has improved in every year since. Three promotions later, Stanley are now a full time club and in the League Two play-off places.

Of all 92 managers in the top four divisions, only Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have served their clubs for longer. But even they have had seasons when their teams have taken a step backwards.

One might imagine it has been plain sailing for Coleman and Bell, but amid it all, Stanley have faced crisis after crisis. Often they have wondered what disaster was going to befall the club next.

The biggest of all came last year, when Stanley’s existence was thrown into doubt by an unpaid tax bill. Wages were paid late, and Coleman and Bell must have worried whether they were going to have a club left to manage.

As managing director Dave O’Neill and potential benefactor Ilyas Khan argued right to the wire, it was Coleman who perhaps made the most timely contribution – persuading Khan to join forces with O’Neill in a new boardroom set-up.

The cash crisis forced Coleman to let club legend Paul Mullin leave to save wages, though, and the Reds have lost key players on several occasions.

Each summer the management duo have had to bring in half a new squad, mostly unproven free transfers, but each time they have unearthed gems to take the team forward. Their ability to spot and develop young talent is remarkable.

There have been other problems, too – players found guilty of the betting offences by the FA, and the club in trouble more than once for fielding ineligible players.

Last year there were problems in the courts, too, as Bobby Grant and Ian Dunbavin admitted affray in a nightclub incident in which England’s Steven Gerrard was found not guilty.

After all of that stress a long-term contract was the least Coleman and Bell deserved, but for more than 11 years they have had to work without even a written deal.

New one-year rolling contracts were agreed in the summer of 2009, but it was merely a gentleman’s agreement and the duo still worried about job security.

They must have wondered too, why the club were willing to offer two-year contracts to players but not to them.

After the financial crisis, multi-millionaire Khan announced his intention to hand them new long-term deals but O’Neill seemed less keen.

The reasons for that were never disclosed, but it is possible there was concern about how such a long-term financial commitment would square with O’Neill’s attempts to cut costs and make the club self-sufficient.

Both the management duo and supporters became increasingly agitated, though, over the wait for the promised three-and-a-half-year deal, agreed in principle some months ago.

Bell made that frustration known when links with the vacant Lincoln job surfaced last week, saying they wanted to talk to the Imps if no deal was forthcoming.

With an approach said to be imminent and Reds fans starting to plan a protest against the board, Stanley had to act.

Negotiating from a position of strength, Coleman and Bell saw their deals turn from three-and-a-half years into four-and-a-half years.

Just as they have done on the field for so many years, they got the result they wanted.