Alan Pardew: “With all due respect to Birmingham, which is an away game, we have some really tough games in Man City and Spurs, so it was important that we got that victory against Liverpool to get us to 22 points.
“Hopefully we can build on that in the next two games.
“The most important thing is Birmingham and everything is geared to that.
“I don’t really look any further than that, so in terms of preparing the team this week it’s all about Birmingham.
“They have a couple of really outstanding players. We are conscious of the fact that we must deal with them.
“But that is, of course, without taking away the merits of our own team.”