‘It’s never an easy place to go’ – Crystal Palace boss Potter on FA Cup tie at Lewes | OneFootball

Crystal Palace manager Jo Potter is wary of the challenge that awaits her side when they travel to Lewes in the third round of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup.

The Eagles go to The Dripping Pan to face The Rookettes on Sunday afternoon.

As the professional side, Crystal Palace go into the game as favourites but manager Potter is aware of the fact that a trip to Lewes is never an easy assignment.

“We’ve done our due diligence on them and they’re in a good bit of form,” Potter said when speaking to WSL Full-Time. “They had a very good result against Watford, so they’ll be confident. They’ve got a lot of threats, some real pace all over the pitch and some real quality. They’ve got a very good manager in Emma [Byrne] who has a lot of experience including the FA Cup. She knows what it means and what it looks like.

“You can see that they’re trying to build something. It’s never an easy place to go, The Dripping Pan; it’s a really good environment and atmosphere and it’s not nice for opponents to play in.

“We are not expecting an easy game but we will make sure that we stick to our task and try to get through to the next round.”

In her playing days, Potter created some special FA Cup memories and ‘the magic of the FA Cup’ has been mentioned on the training pitch this week.

She said “We’ve had a good conversation in terms of what the FA Cup means. The history of the competition is massive in this country. I was lucky enough to play in three [finals], I won two and it still holds one of the best memories that I’ve got from playing football.

“We have got a lot of special memories of the FA Cup [in the squad] and we want to try and continue to push on in every competition. We want to use the momentum from the last few weeks in this game.

“No game is easy. We know what an underdog mentality can cause in cup runs and cup games, so we want to try and be as ruthless as we can leading up to Christmas. We want to continue this good run of form and continue to perform really well. We are preparing as we always do and we are looking to progress to the next round.”

After a sticky start to the season, Crystal Palace go to Sussex on the back of three consecutive wins in all competitions. Potter believes that things are starting to gel for The Eagles on a more consistent basis.

She said “It has took us a while. We knew that it was going to be a transitional period for us. There has been a lot of change in the club; I’m the third manager in 12 months and there’s a lot of change and upheaval with changes in systems, tactics and managerial ways.

“It’s very different being relegated from the WSL to WSL2. There’s a lot of upheaval and change; the leagues are very different, you come up against very different tactics, styles of play and how teams are going to set up against you. A change in the way of playing, a change in environment and style is always going to take time. 

“Over the last few weeks, there were a few things that I wanted us to improve on out of possession. We’ve had the lion’s share of possession in all of our games so far and it’s just making sure that we are really hard to beat, working really hard for clean sheets and reducing mistakes in possession which allow opponents to jump in and force errors. 

“We’ve really kept working and pushing, staying within our processes of what we believed was going to make us better. The players have been brilliant at it; they’ve started translating what we’ve seen from training in bits to more consistent performances. They’re bringing it on the pitch and we’ve seen that over the last few weeks.”

Crystal Palace’s Adobe Women’s FA Cup third round tie at Lewes kicks-off at 4pm on Sunday afternoon.