It should have been a good week for the Football Club of Exeter City. Two of its youth graduates, Christy Pym and Matt Grimes, were called up for the England Under 20s squad, and they got to make their international débuts. A rare international appearance by any Exeter City player on the international stage in its history. But those good thoughts were lost amidst the 90 minutes of football played out at St James Park today.

With a 2-1 defeat to Mansfield Town at St James Park, Exeter City finished the day at the bottom of the tisdale2Football League. Just 2771 fans witnessed the Grecians defeat, and they also witnessed just the one shot on goal. Exeter’s England Under 20 International Matt Grimes scoring from an excellent free-kick being the one consolation. A draw by next week’s opponent Oxford United, playing at Southend, condemned Exeter to the bottom place in the league.

Exeter’s record at St James Park during 2014 has been poor. In the 17 games this year, just 2 games have been won, 7 drawn and 8 lost.  Entertainment in terms of goals has been sparse in those 17 games, Exeter having scored 14 and the opposition 18. Worse for paying Exeter City fans, the 4 competitive games at St James Park this season has seen only 9 shots on target, hardly an inducement for paying £19 to stand on the Big Bank.

A number of off-field issues have focused the minds of Exeter City fans, with a need to go to the PFA for a tisdale_thumbloan, and a number of changes at Board level already indicated that this season would be one of struggle. But the lack of a win so far this season, and a genuine fear of relegation to the Conference, means that many fans want a change.

A petition has been started using change.org online petition system. The message of the petition, directed at the manager, says:-

Although grateful for the happy memories Paul Tisdale once gave us, after three years of disappointing results and performances the football club finds itself in a precarious position both on the field and off the field.

With attendances worryingly low and the club rooted to the bottom of the Football League we call on Paul Tisdale to give somebody else the opportunity to turn around several years of decline and play a more attacking brand of football in an attempt to Tisdale_at_peterboroughbring attendances back up and bring back disillusioned supporters.

Things have got steadily worse over the last couple of seasons and Paul Tisdale has, sadly, shown himself unable to turn around our fortunes despite being given more time and freedom than most Football League managers could dream of.

We ask the ECFC Board to remove Tisdale or we call on Paul Tisdale to take accountability for the position we find ourselves in and to resign as manager of ECFC.

The petition can be found at https://www.change.org/p/exeter-city-club-board-remove-paul-tisdale-as-manager-of-ecfc

 

By Hants

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