Town can use FA Cup cash to aid promotion push

Money from Town’s terrific FA Cup run can help their push for promotion from the Blue Square Bet Premier according to striker Jon Shaw, writes Mark Wood.

Having banked £90,000 in prize money for beating Norwich City in Saturday’s fourth round tie the Hatters now stand the chance of earning even more after being paired with mid-table Championship side Millwall in the fifth round.

Shaw said: “I’m sure our managing director and our manager will tell you we’re a club that people at our standard look to beat.

“Week in, week out, we’re the team to be shot at, because of the fans, because of where we’ve been, and as players we’ve come into that hoping to take the club back up the leagues.

“But again you can’t just rely on gate receipts to do that at our standard, because they’re not always that big, you don’t get TV money.

“So a run like this, if it brings in a quarter of a million pounds, that’s a lot of players at our standard.

“It’s not just one Premier League player’s wages for two months, it’s a few players for an entire year.

“There’s a lot of good players in and around League One, League Two that we would love to see and hopefully this kind of cup run helps the manager to strengthen the team.

“Whether it’s at the cost of my place or not, it doesn’t make a difference to me, I just want to win this league.”

Shaw is hoping the tie will prove lucrative for the Hatters after Norwich controversially slashed their ticket prices for the last match.

He added: “I genuinely thought when it’s a club like Luton Town, the support we had, especially in the third round, if they wanted to give us two sides and leave it at full tickets I think they would have filled it.

“That’s the kind of fans that we’ve got. I’m sure the club were disappointed that they didn’t get the full price and the full gate, but we couldn’t have given them a better present by winning and giving them another crack at it.”

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