Eagles boss Tony Pulis is refusing to believe Crystal Palace are safe after today’s stunning 3-0 success at Cardiff City.

Jason Puncheon (2) and former Bluebird Joe Ledley scored the goals which put the SE25 side seven points above the relegation zone with only six games to play.

But despite now looking odds-on for a second consecutive campaign of Premier League football for the first time in the club’s history, Pulis is not counting his chickens just yet.

When asked if it was the most satisfying result of his brief tenure with Palace, the boss replied: “It will be for about 24 hours and then we move on to the next one.

“That’s the way it is, that’s management for you. I think it was a good performance.

“We knew that Cardiff would be strong and get lots of balls in the air.

“The two centre halves and two central midfield players were brilliant today in defending their box and from there we really fancied ourselves on the break.

“Luckily it worked out that way.”

Pulis added: “We talked all week we played really well against Chelsea last Saturday and we didn’t want to come here and be a case of after the lord mayor’s show.

“It was very, very important that we followed it up with another good performance and that’s what we have done today so it has been very rewarding for the players, the supporters and everybody connected with Palace.

“We’ve got six games to go to get the points that we need.

“We are still not safe, we still need points so Saturday’s game against Aston Villa is a massive game for us.”

Ledley refused to celebrate after scoring Palace’s second goal of the afternoon against his boyhood club and Pulis was full of praise for his efforts afterwards.

“I thought Ledley was fantastic today as well,” the Selhurst supremo said.

“He has brought a little bit of class, he has got a fantastic attitude, his work-rate suits what I want as a manager and his ability is absolutely first class.

“It was great passing, the first pass he passed it through the eye of a needle for Punch to get hold of it.

“He was a great player for this football club and a great servant and he is a Cardiff boy, a south Walian so it is nice.”

Palace’s sporting director Iain Moody, who was controversially dismissed as Malky Mackay’s assistant by Cardiff owner Vincent Tan earlier this season, watched the game with the travelling fans and not in the director’s box, although Pulis said he was unaware of the situation.

“I spoke to Iain yesterday and we didn’t actually speak about whether he was coming or not, I just took it he was coming.

“Obviously he wasn’t in the boardroom.

“Honestly, I haven’t got a clue.

“All of the politics in football I don’t get involved in that, my concentration is on the 11 players who go out and perform on the pitch. I’m not very good at politics, I get myself in trouble!”

And the manager was once again keen to praise the away fans who Moody had spent the afternoon with for their contribution in Palace’s stunning upturn in fortunes.

He said: “Right from the terraces the crowd have picked it up and they’ve been wonderful, especially the home games which we need to win and we needed to pick points up.

“The players have responded to it and it is almost like we have started a little fire and it has just got bigger and bigger.

“But as I’ve said I’m very, very conscious that we haven’t got to that stage yet where we can say we’ve stayed up.

“We still have a lot of work to do.

“As you look at the bottom of the table there is a lot of teams who still have that work to do.”

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