Pearce looks to Cup run to fund his striker search

The FA Cup generated rare, tangible optimism at Manchester City last season but as they seek to start another run tonight at the expense of Sheffield Wednesday it is the prospect of generating transfer funds that will increase the motivation for Stuart Pearce.

Pearce has gone from a manager who spent the first half of this campaign under constant pressure, to one presiding over five games unbeaten and a rise to 10th in the Premiership table. The City manager, however, is too much of a realist to believe in consistency at Eastlands, especially given that his four strikers - Georgios Samaras, Bernardo Corradi, Darius Vassell and Paul Dickov - have delivered only nine goals between them this season and have prompted his search for a goalscorer who can sustain the recent up-turn.

Though under no pressure to sell Micah Richards or Sylvain Distin before the transfer window closes - and Pearce revealed yesterday that he was still to receive any approach from Chelsea for his England international - the City manager is not awash with funds this month and sacrificed Ben Thatcher to Charlton for £500,000 last week to help restructure his squad. To that end, the income from Sky for the third-round replay tonight, a share of the gate receipts and the prospect of a fourth-round home tie against Southampton prompted Pearce to illustrate that it is not only lower league clubs who require FA Cup revenue.

"It will impact on my transfer budget without a doubt," he said. "We budget to go through X amount of FA Cup matches and X amount of League Cup matches and anything above that is more finance to the club. That can equate to me getting another player and if that player turns any given game on any given day, it will be beneficial to everyone connected with the club." City have been linked with a loan move for Seville's Kepa Blanco Gonzalez and although the need for reinforcement increased last night when Dickov underwent surgery on a broken toe that will keep him out for around seven weeks, Pearce explained: "The main criteria for looking for a striker is that we haven't scored enough goals this season. Simple as that. If we were free-scoring we'd be much higher in the table."

The American midfielder Claudio Reyna will soon be taken off City's payroll, having reached an agreement with the club to return to MLS for family reasons, and Pearce confirmed yesterday that his interest in his former winger Shaun Wright-Phillips was at an end. "We have been quoted a price that's a million miles away from our budget and Chelsea don't want a loan deal."

One striker City have secured is Djamel Abdoun, a French Under-20 international who has been signed on loan from Ajaccio until the end of the season and who, back in his homeland at the weekend, somewhat unwisely confessed to modelling his game on the current darling of Old Trafford, Cristiano Ronaldo. "Does he really?" a sceptical Pearce said. "Well, we'll soon knock that out of him."