Newport County AFC operational chairman Gavin Foxall spoke to ANDREW PENMAN about today’s game. He said:

IT’S an honour for all of us at Newport County AFC to welcome Manchester City – the Premier League champions – to Rodney Parade today.

It’s going to be a great occasion for everybody associated with the club and it’s important that everyone – the volunteers, the supporters, the staff, the board, the players, the management – enjoys it.

Nobody expects us to do anything. It’s a free shot for the players and arguably it would go down as one of the greatest shocks in FA Cup history if we do it. So let’s enjoy it.

Rodney Parade is a great leveller – we’ve seen that against Leicester City and Middlesbrough already this season and against Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur last year.

Seeing the temporary stands go up this week has reminded me of that special night against Spurs and hopefully we will see something similar tonight.

It’s an old ground with great acoustics, the fans are right on top of the pitch and the atmosphere will be fantastic.

The whole build-up to the match has been very enjoyable and it’s great to feel such a buzz about the club.

And it’s fantastic for the city. We are an important part of the fabric of the city and, though some people don’t believe it, the council are very supportive of the club.

We’ve got a very good relationship with them, we meet with them quite often and they recognise what we are able to do for the city.

Of course, the whole FA Cup run has been a major financial boost for us as a club.

As a board, you don’t budget for an FA Cup run because that would be rather foolish if it doesn’t happen.

But what it does is ease the pressures in the close season.

Football is a bizarre business where for two months of the year there’s no income, but you’ve still got the same outgoings.

It allows us to plan a lot better – whether it be investing in the team or the infrastructure – it gives you that breathing space to do that and also make other decisions.

Historically we would pull season tickets forward to sell in the close season, or before, to get you through that close season. Obviously, we don’t need to do that this year.

And, when you look to the future, for the second year running we’ve gone on a cup run. That attracts national brands and you then become more attractive commercially.

It’s not far off £2m that we’ve made from the FA Cup over the past two years and when you think that our turnover is about £2.2m then that’s not bad at all.

There are obviously costs that go along with a cup run – in terms of putting the games on and putting up the new stands.

All those things have got to be taken out before you get to your net figure, but it helps us enormously.

And what you should be able to do is build upon that over the next few years. We’ve got ambitions as a club.

We believe that the group of players that we have are good enough to play at League One level and I imagine there will be an increased budget for next season.