Exeter City deserve huge credit for stern Swansea City negotiating tactic that landed seven-figure payday: View | OneFootball

Paul Tisdale has revealed the extreme lengths he went to in the Matt Grimes to Swansea City transfer.

Like him or loathe him, Paul Tisdale did amazing things for Exeter City Football Club.

It all ended on a sour note in 2018 for the long-serving Grecians boss, but few managerial tenures end in glory.

On the pitch, he raised the club up from the doldrums in the Nationwide Conference to consecutive promotions and an eighth-placed finish in League One in 2010/11.

That was the highlight and relegation soon followed, but Tisdale kept City competitive in League Two, taking the club to back-to-back play-off final defeats in his final two years at the club.

The 51-year-old admitted in a recent interview that results were not everything at Exeter and that the long-term success and health of the club from a financial standpoint usually took priority over all else.

And the one deal that was his crowning glory was Matt Grimes' £1.75m move to Swansea City in 2015, a deal which transformed the club from one that was surviving to one that believed it could soon be thriving.

Ollie Watkins' sale to Brentford followed two years later, but he was the reigning EFL Young Player Of The Year and you didn't need to be Pep Guardiola to see he was destined for big things.

City's hard work behind the scenes has eventually helped improve things on the pitch and the club are in the best health it's ever been in, with Gary Caldwell looking to do something Tisdale was never able to and see the Grecians into their fourth successive League One campaign next season.

In his hour-long chat with Business of Sport, Tisdale went into great detail about his time at St James Park and the care he took over the Grimes transfer which he negotiated up from an initial £300,000 offer to a whopping £1.75m final deal.

He said: "We used to split any incomings three ways, a third to the playing budget, a third into the club and a third into the academy.

"The money that went into the playing budget was split over three years so we didn't hit a cliff edge.

"If you think about it, only 1/9th of any fee is going into this year's budget. I remember selling Matt Grimes to Swansea for £1.75m, which kicked off our new economic cycle.

"I was selling him for £1.7m but only about £650,000ish was coming into my budget, split over three years, but it was enough to kick off the next cycle."

This was clearly going to be no ordinary transfer for Exeter City and Tisdale knew it. The fact the board put total trust in him and then sporting director Steve Perryman to do the best thing for the club speaks volumes about how the business is run and, much more often than not, they tend to get it bang on in terms of departures.

"When it came to player sales, it was left to me and Steve Perryman, then we'd go back to the board [when we were happy with the fee]," Tisdale continued, outlining the control he had.

"We were so close to the product, so close to the players. That only happens when there's trust and you earn that over a period of time, when you have a manager and a director of sport who have the best interests of the club [at heart] at all times which is unique.

"Had that information [about clubs being interested in players] got to the board the pressure [to sell] would have mounted too quickly.

"With Matt Grimes, for example, the first offer we had from Swansea was about £300,000 to £400,000.

"Seven weeks later I finally went to the board with an offer of £1.1m to £1.2m. It went on for seven weeks. Even if you have a plan you've got to change because every year's different."

Matt Grimes deal took seven weeks to do

Getting the Grimes fee from around £300,000 to just under six times that is sensational work, especially when you consider it was a League Two side dealing with what was then an established Premier League outfit.

Of course, a top-tier side would have had money to play with, but Tisdale wasn't to be bullied, and the transfer fee set a high benchmark for all future outgoings to be measured against.

Tisdale knew it was an important deal for the club – so much so that he decided to take time away from the day-to-day management of the footballing side to ensure he had full focus on the negotiations.

It turned out to be a genius decision that may have taken away from short-term performances on the pitch but paid long-term dividends.

"It's very unusual but it was a moment in time and it was completely different," he revealed.

"What I did do, at that time, was I took every Tuesday off work for seven weeks to take the call from Swansea.

"I'd sit in my study at home, left the football to the football people back at the club, and I'd wait for the phone call. I'd prepare for it, I'd plan what I was going to say to Huw when he called and it was a seven-week process."

No Matt Grimes sell-on clause

Another question that Tisdale put to bed was the expectation that City were missing out on a sell-on windfall because Grimes was still at Swansea.

However, he revealed that he gambled on cashing in on the sell-on early and that City will receive" no extra money if the midfielder is to move on in the future.

"That was the only time that I sold the sell on [fee up front] at the time," he admitted. "I asked for £1.5m for seven weeks from [former Swansea chairman] Huw Jenkins, he went from £300,000 up and up and up. Matt's still at Swansea doing really well now.

"I asked for £1.5m plus 20% sell on all the way through. He finally came through and went, 'Right, £1.5m with a 20% sell on.' I said, 'It's £1.75m now'.

"I think we spoke every Tuesday for seven weeks and we got it to that point, but I knew at that moment that [an extra] £250,000 was more important than jam tomorrow, some sell-on in six or seven years' time. That moment we gave up the sell on in order to get the money then."

Everything about this deal was perfect for Exeter, right down the unusual call to not include a sell-on fee.

Grimes is a fine player, and one who Swansea have certainly got value out of, but even that decision has been proven to be the right one.

Tisdale might have ended up falling out with the fans, but no-one can doubt he was a savvy operator who strived to get the best-possible value out of every penny the club spent - and he took pride in doing so. Grimes is, and always will be, the perfect example of that.