Alan Pardew: “I spoke to their manager beforehand.
“We were both nervous about the game because of where it fell in the calendar.
“We both have difficult league programmes coming up.
“The Premier League programme took precedence over the Europa League.
“If we hadn’t already qualified it would have been different.
“But I think we both came through unscathed.
“They will be happier than us because their second string played better than ours.”