Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale says he is looking to up the minutes played by some of his first team squad going into pre-season friendlies against Taunton Town and Cardiff City this week.
City play Taunton on Tuesday, at the Viridor Stadium, and Tis has confirmed that a number of first team players will be involved in the match as he looks to give those that have missed parts of pre-season more game-time.
“We have got a good squad and we need to get some parity across that squad in terms of minutes and progress,” said Tis. “We have a number of players – like Craig Woodman and David Wheeler – who have missed minutes through the odd injury here or there. So, it won’t just be youth (that will play). We have got Wheeler, Woodman, (Matt) Oakley, (Liam) McAlinden, Jordan Tillson and Pierce Sweeney who will play in the game. There will be plenty of first team players there.”
Following on from Tuesday’s game against Taunton, City will face Cardiff at St James Park. Tisdale admits it will be a delicate balance to strike in this week’s game and pre-season training in terms of pushing the players hard enough so they are ready for the opening game of the season away at Blackpool, on August 6, but not too much so they are jaded.
“It is always a balance, there is no one correct way of doing things,” he said. “You don’t want to give the players too much work so they are jaded going into the start of the season and you increase the propensity for injury and, on the other hand, you need to get them fit and robust enough to start the campaign.
“It is a very, very difficult balance, but so far it’s so good. We need to increase the minutes in the players going into this game. The maximum so far has been 70 minutes and we need to increase that a bit. We will be looking at 80 or 90 minutes this week and Thursday, against Cardiff City, will be a really good challenge for us.”