Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe has urged his players to park dreams of Wembley for the next few weeks as the club look to bolster their place in the Champions League.
Newcastle still sit in third place and have an excellent opportunity to be back at Europe's top table next season having lost just one top-flight game all season. But Howe knows that focus is now vital for his players as they look to keep the fight alive on two fronts.
Speaking ahead of the game against West Ham, Howe said: "It's about not getting carried away with that achievement in itself, it's about saying that was our expectation of ourselves before the game and we hit our expectations.
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"Now we shift our attention to a different competition we want to excel in. I don't think extreme emotions serve you that well."
Howe says it is simply about not dropping their levels of performance. He reflected: "I think I'm blessed with the fact that the group itself is very committed to what we're doing and I think they know that we can't switch off and think of the final with three huge games in between.
"The beauty of quite an experienced group is that they've seen it before, maybe in different ways and not necessarily in this type of cup final but they've been through similar experiences.
"They know the quality of the Premier League and if we drop our levels, we'll get punished so I think there's that immediate thought that we want to continue our good league form. We want the crowd to embrace the positivity of what happened and keep that excitement for the cup final but, hopefully, and express it in our league games as well."
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