SAM Allardyce put Premiership matters on hold as Wanderers set their sights on Wednesday's Carling Cup semi-final showdown with Aston Villa,

"The full focus now is on trying to get to the Millennium Stadium," the Reebok boss said in a determined tone after seeing his side achieve back-to-back league wins for only the second time this season.

Kevin Davies' sixth goal of the season secured a hard-fought victory over Portsmouth, following up the exciting derby win at Blackburn a week earlier and lifting them back into the top half of the table.

"The last two victories have given us a nice cushion and should give us the confidence and the desire to look up, rather than down. We should now be looking to plough on and try to stay in the top half, if we can. If we weren't in the Carling Cup we'd have a couple of weeks' rest to get ready for the next game at Charlton. But because we've got these two massive games, the Premiership goes to one side."

Allardyce says success on two fronts -- the Premiership and Carling Cup -- is generating a confidence he believes is vital if he is to lead the club to its most successful season in modern times.

And he emphasised his deadly-serious approach to the home first leg of the Villa tie by electing not to risk Simon Charlton's hamstring injury against Portsmouth, despite the seasoned defender passing a fitness test on Saturday morning.

"Simon took one of the miracle cures we have on the medical side here," Allardyce said in reference to Charlton's rapid recovery from the injury he picked up at Blackburn. "We can accelerate certain situations -- hamstrings being one -- and on this occasion we turned a 10-day to two-week injury into seven days.

"But I didn't want to risk him with Wednesday in mind so I put him on the bench. Emerson Thome felt his calf through most of the game so that could be a worry. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that we don't have any more defensive problems."

The victory over Portsmouth was not a convincing one but it delighted the manager, who saw his team win at home in the Premiership for the first time in four attempts and keep a clean sheet in the league for the first time since they beat Everton 2-0 at the Reebok on November 29.

"I thought it was magnificent from start to finish," he said with a wry smile. "Clean sheets are going to be the important thing from now until the end of the season. It took a wonderful save from Jussi and sometimes at the end we had a little bit of luck, but this time we didn't fall foul of missing good opportunities to put the game beyond Portsmouth. We teetered on the edge of nervous instability, but we came through it.

"Portsmouth made life extremely difficult for us, but I felt the tempo in the first half was far too pedestrian. It allowed Portsmouth to get behind the ball and we didn't create one chance.

"But come the second half, the lads got going right from the start and asserted the pressure, closed the opposition down and got good balls quickly into their box. A good interchange got Kevin his goal, which looks a much better finish now than I thought in the first place.

"It was a little bit scrappy, to be fair, and there was some heart-in-the-mouth stuff in the last few minutes. Javi Moreno made a reasonable contribution, without being as good as he's been when he's been substitute, but Ibrahim Ba gave us a nice contribution and kept Berkovic quiet when he was causing us some problems.

"Overall it was a solid, sound performance rather than that wonderful attacking football we've been playing and getting bugger-all from."