Alan Pardew: "This is where you want to be, the pinnacle of the game is the Champions League.
"To actually be competing for it is more than we imagined and to have that opportunity is something that doesn't come along very often, and we want to try to grasp it.
"It's been a magnificent achievement by everyone at this football club, and we can't wait for Sunday to unfold."
"I would be foolish if I sat here and said I thought we were going to finish fifth. The Board made a good statement - top 10 - I thought that was fair.
"In terms of what we had from last year and the new players and hopefully bringing it all together, we thought we would have a season where we would finish strongly and get a top 10 finish and then look to next year to perhaps do something like we have done this year.
"We are well ahead of schedule in terms of players getting used to the club, used to the pitch here, which is a difficult place to play, and therefore we have had a far better season than I could have imagined.
"We have had some fantastic goals, but just for momentum and everything it meant, Shola's goal against Sunderland would probably be my favourite moment because it was such an important goal.
"We would have lost a lot of momentum if we had lost that game at home, and we deserved it.
"We deserved to win the game, so it would have really hurt us to have lost it, so that would probably be my highlight.
"There is an understanding that there is a budget here and we have to try to excel within the budget, and we have managed to do that.
"We will still probably be on the same agenda next year. We have to be careful that if we lose a player, it's for a fee that is going to take us forward, and that we replace them with the quality that goes out of the building.
"That's something that myself, [chief scout] Graham Carr and my scouting team are on hand to do.
"But for Mike Ashley and Derek in particular, who runs the club, it has been a fantastic season, a season from which maybe fans can understand there is a game-plan here, there is a structure they can be proud of.
"I think they deserve a lot of credit."