Fulham and the opportunity to reach Wembley were just two of the topics discussed in this week’s press conference, which also included Jean-Philippe Mateta’s return from injury, Dougie Freedman, and more…

On potentially leading Palace to Wembley…

Of course it would be great. I know everybody is waiting for this chance. In the last nine years Palace have achieved this [getting to Wembley] twice, so it’s a great achievement for the club: one final and one semi-final [in the FA Cup].

But when you look at the eight managers, maybe except Pep [Guardiola] who is used to finals, but everyone else with their clubs it is a unique situation.

We are one of those clubs not normally in this situation, so we’ll show our best effort tomorrow to win at Fulham and then play the semi-finals.

Now it is the quarter-final and we’re facing a very good Fulham team. We know this, we’ve played them twice. They won at Selhurst, then we won there. We’re not so far apart in the table.

This is the game I expect, Fulham are in the same situation, they want to go to Wembley as well. So we have to be ready and play at our top, top level. If we do it is possible to win there and this is what we will try.

He didn’t ask me about the decision but I was involved in the process so it didn’t come surprisingly to me.

He was here for eight years as Sporting Director and he was looking for a new, different challenge away from the Premier League. He has taken the decision for himself and his family, so we have to agree.

There was no disappointment because Dougie was open, so it was all good. He made some excellent recruitment with all our scouts and the scouting department here.

Everything is on the correct pathway. It’s a new situation for the club. A very important person has left after eight years, so it is something new, but we have very good communication within the club.

He’s done a great job. It’s the circle of football, and the circle of life maybe, you get changes in a company, in a club.

The five most successful teams in the competition’s history are absent from this year’s last eight. This is only the third FA Cup season, and first since 2019, where at least four quarter-finalists have never won the competition.

We would be three games away from winning the competition even if they [Arsenal and Liverpool] were still in the competition.

If you want the win the trophy you have to beat big teams to win it. I don’t care who is in the competition. I just care about Fulham and Crystal Palace, because this is the team I am responsible for.

I think we showed many times we are competitive against any team in the league, if we perform on our top level.

It is up to us to be ready tomorrow, that’s it.

I’m always a little bit surprised that this is a question. I’ve seen a lot of teams rotate a bit, especially in the League Cup. But for us we don’t play international games, we just play these two cup competitions.

So even if we played in the final of this competition, I think that would be 49 games this season. That’s a normal number, the teams in the Championship play a similar amount if they reach the play-offs.

So I don’t see a reason not to play the strongest team and I think this is also what the players deserve. When they perform good and train well, they show they can help the team – this is the team I will start, always.

You could mention quite a few things. We were struggling at the beginning of the season and then things started to work better. We now have very few injuries here, apart from two long-term injuries. Unfortunately, this happens in football.

The group is fantastic. They are always so hard working in training and always hungry and ambitious to improve. It’s a great staff here as well who supports the players in every part of the game – we have a great backroom staff working with them.

I think it’s teamwork and this is what we have to continue until the end of the season.

When I have watched him training, he looks the same as he was before. He needed to get back into his rhythm because he couldn’t really train for two weeks. One week he was just at home and the second week he trained individually.

Also he was lucky in the sense that nothing was fractured, there was no concussion. At least it was ‘just’ the ear. I know it was a terrible injury but some players say that the ear actually looks better than before now! So it’s okay.

Also our doctor and the medical team did a great job finding the right protection for him. He tried on a few different ones in training to see which fit best. So he is ready.

If I believed it was a problem I wouldn’t play him, but it is not a problem.

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