Alan Pardew: “We’ve discussed (the Champions League).
"I think we would be silly not to.
"We’ve kind of had brief discussions about what the implications of that could be.
“Are we looking at third now? No, we’re just looking at Stoke (on Saturday).
"But I think you all know me well enough to know that I haven’t really touched on the Champions League before and I am touching on it now, for sure. It would be silly not to.
“I definitely think that we would really have achieved something special if we finish fifth or sixth and it looks, obviously, as if sixth is already a real chance for us.
"Any higher than that would be astounding, really, for a new team to have done what they’ve done. And we’ve got a great chance.
“The more weeks go past, the bigger that chance seems to get and we’ve got a home game now and we need to win that.
“Come Saturday night, after Tottenham’s game, we could find ourselves in an even better position than we are today.
“I don’t think you really have to enlarge, but you do need to make sure that our young players are really on song.
“Maybe we’ll bring in one or two extra, but no more than that. And actually the funds for the Europa League don’t actually suggest you can do more than that. Unfortunately, that’s the way it’s been devised.
“We haven’t really got two teams at the moment, and I don’t suppose Tony thinks he has either.
“What you have to call upon is the young group in your squad, like the Vuckic, the Fergusons, the Sammy Ameobis next year, we’ll be leaning on them far greater than we have this year.”