Potter: It's a competition that we want to go far in
Crystal Palace Women's Manager Jo Potter gave her thoughts ahead of Palace's trip to Lewes in the third-round of the Adobe Women's FA Cup on Sunday.
She spoke to the media in her pre-match press conference, which you can watch on Palace TV, embedded above.
Potter is a three-time FA Cup finalist and two-time winner, having lifted the trophy with Arsenal in 2004 and Birmingham City in 2012.
Speaking about what the competition means to her and her squad, she said: "We had a good conversation about it this morning, about what the FA Cup means and how the history of the competition is massive in this country.
"I was lucky enough to play in three, I've won two and it still holds one of the best memories that I've got of playing football.
"We've got a lot of special memories of it and we want to try and push on in every competition, and use the momentum of the last few weeks into this game."
After a difficult start to the season, Palace are on a three game winning streak after their 3-0 victory over Birmingham City on Sunday, and Potter spoke about how things have just clicked in recent weeks.
"We've always had the lion's share of possession in all of our games that we've played so far.
"It's just about making sure that we're really hard to beat, really working hard for clean sheets, lessening up on mistakes in possession to force errors for opponents to jump all over.
"So, we've really kept working and kept pushing and stayed with our processes of what we believed was going to make us better. The players have been brilliant at it.
"They've started translating that from training into more consistent performances and they're bringing it on the pitch," she said.
It's really important that we stay on the straight and narrow and concentrate on what's ahead of us.
—Jo Potter
Sunday's trip to the Dripping Pan is the first of three huge games to close out 2025, as Palace then travel to Bristol City on Wednesday, 17th December before hosting Arsenal in the Subway Women's League Cup on Sunday, 21st December.
Potter spoke about the busy schedule, and how keeping focus is key.
She said: "We spoke today about staying fully focused on Lewes this weekend and what that looks like for us, taking it one game at a time.
"Each game's massive, every single game is a difficult game in this competition and it's going to be no different on Sunday.
"It's competition that we want to go far in, we want to get through to the next round. So we've got to make sure that we've got our full focus on it.
"We can't start looking ahead towards Bristol before we face Lewes. So it's really important that we stay on the straight and narrow and concentrate on what's ahead of us."
The Palace boss also gave her thoughts on Lewes, and why it will not be a straightforward affair in Sussex.
She said: "They're in a good little bit of form at the minute, they had a very good result against Watford recently.
"So they're confident as well, they've got a lot of threats, they've got some real pace all over the pitch with some real quality as well.
"They've got a very good manager in Emma [Byrne] who's got a lot of experience, she'll have a lot of experience in the FA Cup as well, she knows what it means and what it looks like.
"So you can see they're really trying to build something, it's never an easy place to go down to the Dripping Pan."
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