Alan Pardew eyes Palace FA Cup glory after double dose of final heartache

His team convincingly outplayed Stoke to secure a 1-0 victory and progress to the competition's fifth round, suggesting the manager could oversee another final 10 years after his last.

On that occasion in 2006 his young West Ham team were on the verge of a 3-2 victory until Steven Gerrard scored an exceptional equalising goal before Liverpool won on penalties.

That came 16 years after his first, when as a Palace player he was denied by Stoke manager Mark Hughes forcing a replay they lost by scoring for Manchester United seven minutes from the end of extra time.

Wilfried Zaha was particularly impressive in scoring the game's only goal in the 17th minute to lead Palace to defeat Stoke and reach the competition's last 16, and asked about his team's chances this season, Pardew responded: "If we can put (our league form) right this week, then I'll be really looking forward to the second half of the season.

"We definitely need to win one of these next two games, and then we can look forward to the cup.

"I've said it before: lesser teams than the quality I have have won this competition in recent years. We've got the talent to win it, you need a bit of luck with the draw: we don't need Man City away, we don't need Chelsea away, someone at home would be nice.

"Third-time lucky? I'm an eternal optimist. I'm always conscious of this competition, I've come so close on two occasions, that it's a strong bond in me to try and win it. This team is every bit as good as that (West Ham) team I took to that final in 2006, but you do need a break here and there."

One concern for Pardew might be an ankle injury suffered by Yohan Cabaye that forced him to substitute the midfielder, and speaking of the challenge by Stephen Ireland and referee Mark Clattenburg's refusal to stop play, the manager said: "I thought Mark got that particular situation wrong.

"It was a foul, because (Ireland) came from the side on Yohan. Yohan's ankle is swollen. We'll have to wait and see that there's not permanent damage there.

"Mark realised his mistake, perhaps, because we couldn't get any treatment to Yohan, I was waiting to get treatment and he was playing the game on, he lost his way a little bit there, but I don't want to criticise him, it was a tough game to referee."

Stoke's defeat came five days after they lost their Capital One Cup semi-final with Liverpool on penalties. With them having played over 120 minutes Hughes made eight changes to his team, who responded with a flat performance, and he said: "It's been a hard week to take.

"You don't want to go out of two competitions. We wanted to progress and this (defeat) was a consequence of (Tuesday's).

"We were a little bit stretched, we had a number of players unavailable.

"We didn't have enough in the final third when we had good opportunities.

"We're disappointed because it's a competition we wanted to do well in.

"We can have a good run at the European places (via the Premier League), we're very much in the mix. We can focus on what we have left. We want to try and build on the past two seasons, which is two ninth-placed finishes. We want to go better than that."