If you're going to win promotion, you may as well do it in style. Picture the scene. Conference Play Off semi finals, you've lost the first leg at home 2-1 to your local rivals, and despite a valiant effort, with just twenty minutes to go, you're 3-1 down on aggregate and having to put up with your bitter enemies celebrating the victory and singing songs about Wembley. Then twenty minutes and four goals later, you've completed one of the greatest comebacks ever seen in football to win the second leg 4-1. They won the Play Off final beating Cambridge to secure their return to League Football, but it was that game against Torquay which will last the longest in the minds of the Grecians.

But since arriving at St James Park, he's fully justified that decision by the Exeter board of directors. In his first season, he took the Grecians to their first ever appearance in the Conference Play Offs, before getting beaten by Morecambe in the Final. However, he took them a step further in 2007-8 with the win over Cambridge, and securing a return to the Football League after a five year absence.

Tisdale's style is one to be much admited. I don't mean he wears nice clothes and that, but his side has been noted for a very patient game, where the emphasis is on playing football in the correct way - something not always applicable in the Conference, and all of his successes have been done despite having recouped over £250,000 worth of transfers during his time.

Certainly one of the best up and coming managers about.

A better season? Have a read of what we've put as happened last year. Can it really get any better than that? You're talking best moment ever there for many an Exeter supporter, and competing against the likes of Barnet and Port Vale will hardly get their supporters reminiscing in the pubs for hours upon end.

From a non supporters point of view, a better season would see consolidation in League Two, with perhaps a push for a third successive Play Offs appearance. Macclesfield showed last season that its possible for Play Offs winners to come up and compete at the top half of the table, and with general consensus suggesting that this season will be a much more open division, who's to say that they can't go a step further?

There's three sides that would ordinarily be considered to be pushing for promotion who will be starting on negative points, there's not the money bag sides of MK and Peterborough this time round, and you could argue that a settled side like Exeter could be the surprise package and sneak through.

We often have concerns over the promoted side from the Play Offs. History has proved that we're wrong to have those concerns, as the Play Offs winners have often out performed the Conference Champions in the opening season.

But it goes as you'd expect. The Conference is a weaker division than League Two, and whilst you'd rightfully expect the best side from the Conference to compete, it's a big ask for the fourth best side to do the same. Exeter finished eighteen points behind Aldershot last season, and if they have a similar finish this time round, that could see them as being shark food for the likes of Luton.

There's been few changes over the Summer, and bringing in a 36 year old striker who's got 7 goals in eighteen months isn't someone to pin your season's hopes upon.

15th - Mid table

Since dropping to the Conference, they seemed to embrace the Conference better than any other relegated side has done. I know there's been sides who bounced back, but Exeter seemed to avoid the usual "We're a league club here on holiday" ethic which has haunted some sides, and they've avoided the traps that Oxford and others have fallen into, becoming just another Conference side.

Every season in the Conference showed a decent finish, with progression on each season before, and we wouldn't be at all surprised to see that continue this next season. They've got an excellent manager in place, and a fan base which is capable of more than re-establishing themselves back in the Football League.

If there's any doubts, then it's the lack of time between winning the Play Offs final and the start of the new season. For a progressive club like Exeter, it doesn't perhaps give them as much time as they would have liked to prepare for life in the division above.

Furthermore, Tisdale has shown plenty of loyalty to the squad which served him well last season. We admire that, and fully understand that he wants to reward the players, but there's no room for sentiment in football. Take ourselves, it would have been very easy to stick with our two Play Off heroes Tommy Lee and Ben Muirhead, but both were effectively shown the door for the simple reason that they would not make our side a better side.

But we feel that the momentum from the Play Off win will certainly see them through in much the same way that it did for Morecambe last season, and given our theory of the bottom of the division being much poorer this season due to the points deduction and other club's reaction to it, this will be a year to consolidate and build on for the future allowing some of the much heralded Grecian youth players to come through.