Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale says he is hoping to use the money the club can generate from their FA Cup third-round tie with Premier League West Brom to sign a couple of players to help their League Two promotion push.
City, who are owned by the Supporters’ Trust, have one of the smallest base-budgets in the Football League and rely heavily on cash windfalls from player sales and cup runs to help keep them competitive in the division.
It is for that reason that Tis is urging the club to maximize the opportunity of the tie with West Brom, by increasing the ticket prices for the game, to help him strengthen the playing squad so they can chase down the likes of Luton Town and Notts County, who have bigger budgets than most in League Two, in the second half of this season.
“We’ve got to take advantage of it,” said Tis. “I’ll be going to the board asking for the opportunity to sign a player or two in January to strengthen our promotion push.
“This is an opportunity to put the prices up, gain the money when we’ve got it.
“We need to make every advantage we can take here because, hopefully, this will give us one or two players I’d like to sign in January if I have the chance.
“I knew Tuesday was a really important game for us, because, if we got through, it’s a maximum crowd. We’ll surely put the prices up considerably to give ourselves the opportunity to sign those good players that I’d like.
“I’ll be going to the board, possibly writing the email tonight when I get home because we’ve got to make the most of it.”
However, Tis also urged the players to focus on their League Two campaign as he was disappointed in his team’s performances a couple of seasons ago in their lead up to a third round tie against Liverpool.
“I want to make sure we absolutely don’t do what we do before the Liverpool game, which is lose three league games in a row,” he said.
“Our priority is Stevenage on Saturday and, after this conversation, we’ll discuss West Brom in January, in the day or two leading up to that game.
“Until then, we’ll concentrate on Stevenage, Yeovil and the players will hear nothing of it from me because we want to win some league games.
“We’ve just lost our consistency in the league at the moment, so West Brom is about the money generated, which will hopefully give me the opportunity to strengthen with a player or two in January.
“It’s a balance – we failed before the Liverpool game, I think, in terms of our focus. We spoke about it all the time and we ended up losing too many games.
“We mustn’t do that again. We’ll think about only Stevenage, then only Yeovil and so on for the next few weeks.”