Saturday, February 25, 2012

Dalglish feeling calm ahead of Liverpool's League Cup final against Cardiff

Reds' manager is looking forward to his visit to Wembley and urges his players to adopt a 'winning mentality' as the favourites seek to avoid an upset

Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish has insisted that he is not feeling the pressure ahead of the League Cup final against Cardiff on Sunday.

The Merseyside club have failed to win any major silverware since the FA Cup in 2006, with their last final, in the Champions League in 2007, ending in defeat to AC Milan.

The Reds' manager enjoyed a glittering career as a player and manager, making 27 appearances at Wembley and admitted he was hoping to enjoy his day out at Wembley.

"I'm not very emotional. I suppose like everything else in life every person is not going to act the same to situations," he told reporters.

"Emotion and nerves will be helpful to some and detrimental to others but is part and parcel of football and it is how you handle it.

"There are a lot of people with different personalities who will handle it totally differently.

"But if you are not going to enjoy getting to Wembley you have a bit of a problem. It didn't affect us [the Liverpool side he won trophies with] too badly I don't think.

"We had our share of victories, and we also lost, but I don't think we won because the other people were more affected by emotions than we were and I don't think we lost because we were more affected then them."

The Scot then revealed that he will not be preparing for the final in any special way, looking at it as just another match and denied that his experience would help his team too much.

"A final is not really different from any other matches. Character and luck play a huge part in every game," he added.

"You wouldn't say a final is just another game because it is a final at Wembley but all the other ingredients which go into getting the result are exactly the same.

"Whether you have experience of being somewhere [Wembley] before doesn't mean it is going to be helpful."

Liverpool are strong favourites for the clash against Championship side Cardiff, with Malky MacKay's men not in the best of form at the moment losing three out of four games in February.

Despite their run of results, the Bluebirds still occupy the play-off places and will pose a tough a test with Dalglish talking down their role of favourites in the final.

"It's not necessarily more pressure. There is always going to have to be a favourite but you only get out of the match what you put in," he explained.

"Favourites have lost before, although not too often, but we have to overcome Cardiff on the day.

"We will go there best prepared and see what happens. We won't jump ahead. We've got the final, which is one step, now let's see what we do when we get there."

The League Cup is not seen as the most prestigious competition by all and the former Newcastle manager seemed to agree with that view.

"Who is going to decide whether this cup is important or not?" he said.

"I think we just need to have a winning mentality."

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