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We must not get ahead of ourselves - Pardew

Cape Town - Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew has hailed his team's attitude after beating Tottenham 1-0 at White Hart Lane in the FA Cup on Sunday.

Right-back Martin Kelly slotted home the crucial goal just before half-time to send the Eagles through to the quarter-finals, and Pardew was delighted to get his team into the latter stages of the competition.

"The guys showed that we were resilient," he said. "We defended well, which you have to do at Spurs. We broke well and the second half, if I'm honest, I was surprised that we handled that so well. We really did well in the second half.

"It was important and the timing of it was good because with the league form, we needed to sit ourselves down and go, 'It ain't been that bad. Let's kick on now with these final 12, 13 games that we've got left'.

"I said to the players in the changing room, 'You won't know the effects and the impact the FA Cup has until you reach the quarter-finals, the semi-final and the final. Then you understand this competition and the romance of it'.

"We learned some lessons from the two Tottenham games before. We changed the shape so we didn't get pushed back so far but in doing that we had to release our full-backs to get forward. To get that goal from a full-back shows the kind of intent that we had."

The Eagles will meet Championship side Reading in the next round, and Pardew has talked up the importance of the domestic cup in the club's long-term plans.

"We're trying to build a club and a great cup run to the semi-final, to the final, can gain you support and build you as a club," he added.

"People were talking about Europe and stuff like that. We didn't dismiss it but there's some very, very big clubs in the Premier League. We must not get ahead of ourselves."

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