"It is a massive tournament for us this year and it might just release some funds for us to strengthen the squad - that is the way I am looking at it," he says, ahead of the trip to the JJB stadium.
Although one report has claimed Alan is 'stepping up' a search for players as soon as the transfer window opens, this is not strictly the case - technically, at least, West Ham can buy Premiership players whether the upcoming window is open or not.
But success on the field rather than making money off it is as much Alan's and he says:
"I said when I arrived that this club should be winning things, and they haven't won anything for such a long time.
"There is no reason we can't enter the competition to try and win it - and that is what we will try and do.
"We will give it our best effort but we need to get past Wigan, which is a tricky one.
"I haven't had too much luck in my managerial career in the cups but I was certainly lucky on the playing side.
"We were desperately unlucky in the League cup earlier in the season when we should have won at Tottenham and maybe it is our turn.
"The priority lies in the league and getting into the Premiership; anything we get in the cup will be a bonus, to be honest, but certainly our fans, the way they have supported us this year, will be up there again at Wigan.
"We had another full house at our place when we got beaten by Ipswich and they will be back for the Preston game, so it would be nice to do something for them."
There was certainly an ebullient reaction to the win over Forest, with the backroom staff, even the coach driver, coming onto the field to applaud the fans, and Alan will have no complaints if there is a similar celebration at the final whistle at the weekend.
"They were terrific and I tried to get all the staff over at the end to thank them; I wanted to say 'thank you' because they were great on the day," he explains.
"We are all in it and as I have been trying to say all along, this club needs to come together, every part of it.
"Everyone is important to the club, everyone, and when they are all pulling together we are so much stronger."
Alan acknowledges he had said some strong words after the Ipswich defeat, and explains:
"The players were probably hurt by my criticism and that is what it was intended to be - to get a reaction from them.
"These are top players and by their own admission they are not being consistent enough.
"But certainly at Forest we had some top performances - Tomas Repka, Hayden Mullins, Michael Carrick, David Connolly...it wasn't just the strikers who put in some really good perfomances.
"We need to do it week in, week out for 90 minutes because, as I have said, there was a 15 minute period where three or four of us switched off against Ipswich and you can't do that."