BBC1:

"Typical Cup tie football on a day a team not in the Premiership can come to a Premiership club and might out-do you. We've seen it before, we'll see it again. But it wasn't today at St James's.

"To be honest, I was absolutely delighted with our performance. We gave a true pro performance. We were very solid all the way through, no silly individual errors, no mistakes at the back, a competent keeper who kept us in the game with two very good saves - so they could have scored twice, they had an offside goal given against them, which was tight, marginally tight, but was offside, and we had the same situation at the other end where we scored twice and, again, tight decisions.

"But it flowed and it counter-flowed. I'm delighted we got through. And we've actually given a very true pro performance here today, played up to our quality - and we had to do that to beat a very kind of rousing, spirited, Crystal Palace. I have to give them a bit of credit, you know, we were always at full stretch, we couldn't relax, we never had a big cushion, and they performed very creditably."

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Answers

You can see his face gleaming in the Cup, can't you?

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Shearer told Sky Sports that the players had been "well aware" of the Sunderland result before they kicked off, and were determined to avoid another North East banana skin. Al said the lads had put in a good solid professional performance.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002