Potter: Every game now is a cup final

Women

8 Feb 2026

Crystal Palace Women's Manager Jo Potter gave her thoughts at full-time, after she saw her side beat promotion rivals Bristol City 2-1 at the VBS Community Stadium.

Goals from Abbie Larkin and Ashleigh Weerden overturned an early Lexi Lloyd-Smith goal to claim a vital three points at home.

Manager Jo Potter spoke to the media after the game, and emphasised the significance of the three points.

She said: "Yeah, we knew it was going to be a tight one.

"We knew that both teams were wanting to come here and get three points because of where we sit in the league.

"We're in close proximity to each other, third and fourth coming into this game, we knew it was going to be vital.

"We needed to win it to keep that gap close. If they won it, they'd have gone pretty far ahead and we couldn't really do that for our ambitions towards the end of the season.

"I thought we deserved the three points, so we're really, really pleased."

Palace had to show some resilience throughout the game, with a quality Bristol City side looking threatening throughout the 90 minutes.

Potter was keen to praise the mentality of her team, especially in their reaction to going behind.

She said: "I thought the goal didn't really affect us. In fact, we played some really good stuff after that.

"We settled into the game a little bit and created some opportunities. We created one just before we had the goal, actually, when My Cato got in.

"We said at half-time, there's no panic, there's no stress.

"We knew the little tweaks that we needed to change in terms of the press and what we needed to do in terms of our playing out and the gaps that we needed to find against them.

So, the players listened and they took it on board and we managed to come up with a really, really important three points."

She spoke more about what was chnaged at half-time, and how that affected proceedings in thee second-half.

"Towards the end of the first half, we just altered our press a little bit.

"We recognised that they were rolling in one side and pushing on the other, so we could be a little bit more aggressive on our right-hand side.

"So, we pushed Molly a little bit higher to be able to land on their press a little bit more, and it stopped the supply chain to Jessie Gale.

"We were happy with that tweak that we made, and I thought we controlled it very much so in the second half," she said.

The result puts Palace just one point off of third-place Bristol City.

Potter spoke about the significance of this result, and what it will mean moving forwards.

She said: "It's really important. I think every win is, every game now is super important.

"Everybody feels like every game now is a cup final, because the league's so tight, and there's a lot to play for.

"There's two promotion spots, and there's a play-off place. So, everybody wants to be as high up the league as possible, so we know what each game means."

Palace Women take on Charlton at Selhurst Park on Sunday, 29th March in what is set to be a pivotal game in Palace's season.

Tickets are now on sale for that fixture, you can get yours by clicking below!

Buy Charlton tickets here!

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