Alan Pardew wants Crystal Palace to show FA Cup form in Premier League
Saturday 12 March 2016 00:11, UK
Alan Pardew told Crystal Palace to take their FA Cup form into the Premier League after they booked a semi-final spot.
Palace took 86 minutes to turn their dominance over Championship side Reading into goals before a Yohan Cabaye penalty and Fraizer Campbell's tap-in secured a date at Wembley.
Pardew's side have now won four times in the cup in 2016, beating three Premier League sides, but a run of 12 league games without victory has seen them slide towards the relegation places.
"We've won, but we've got to win in the league," the Palace boss said. "A semi-final in the Cup brings an excitement to you, and we hope that rubs off on our league form.
"We've had to win at Southampton and Tottenham, Stoke at home and now at Reading, and yet we can't get a win in the league.
"We've been pressure conscious of late, but that wasn't there in the Cup. We have 10 games left now and we're looking forward to them.
"There's different pressure on us in the league, but maybe Leicester [on March 19] is a good game for us. No one expects us to beat them.
"I'm pleased for our fans who have suffered in our home games of late. It's great to see that end happily with a semi-final to come. Great forward play from Wilfried Zaha, Yannick Bolasie and Emmanuel Adebayor, which was quite exciting at every level, so we have to take that into the next game."
The result denied Reading a second straight trip to the semi-finals, but their boss Brian McDermott said: "Our priority is the league.
"We don't want it to be a situation where we talk about the FA Cup and FA Cup runs. We want to be talking about winning league games. The last 18 months, we've not done that."
