Keep The Pressure On

Alan Pardew has named an 18 man squad for the trip to Millwall at the weekend, hoping his side can pick up where they left off in the first half against Crewe - and maintain the heat on West Brom.

"Fair play to the staff and players at West Brom but all we can do is put the pressure on and see what happens - getting over the line is the hardest part," he says.

"We are putting together a fantastic team that can put pressure on the top two sides, they are really getting into a groove and that's what you need going into the final stretch."

"We go into Sunday in good heart and we want to make sure we give a performance like we did on Wednesday, when, in all honesty, we should have scored more than we did, and then their two goals wouldn't have looked so bad.

"We have to be more assertive and mentally strong to really finish teams off - we didn't take all our chances.

"We were absolutely brilliant in the first half and we started the second half well, but then our inexperience let us down and they came back at us.

"We're a young team and performed well, but we need to be a little more ruthless."

Whether Alan makes changes remains to be seen but the recently injured trio of Matthew Etherington [tibia], David Connolly [thigh], and Hayden Mullins [back] are still not quite ready.

Steve Lomas and Rob Lee are also not yet considered available either as they continue their rehabilitation.

SQUAD: Bywater, Srnicek, Melville, Dailly, Repka, Ferdinand, Quinn, Harley, Carrick, Reo-Coker, Horlock, McAnuff, Nowland, Carole, Deane, Zamora, Harewood, Cohen.