Billy McKinlay says West Ham United head to Liverpool for Wednesday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final aware of the task ahead of them, but confident they can overcome the odds and reach the last four.
The Irons have won seven and lost just one of their previous nine matches in all competitions, rising to eighth in the Premier League and reaching the UEFA Europa League round of 16 in the process.
Now, attentions turn to the Carabao Cup and a trip to Anfield, a stadium West Ham have won at just once in the past 60 years and one where Liverpool have not tasted defeat at since Real Madrid’s UEFA Europa League round of 16 win there in February.
So, while the Hammers will be given nothing more than an outside chance of triumphing on Merseyside, the assistant coach and former Scotland international says the Londoners will not be daunted by the prospect.
There is confidence because I think we’ve had a decent run over the last eight or nine games.
In the last two games in particular we’ve put in good performances. We followed up Freiburg with obviously a good performance in the win against Wolves, which was always a tough game, so we’re in a good place in a busy period.
You’ve just got to keep going as the football is relentless. The level of success brings that, the amount of games, the level of games, the quality of the opposition, so we’re enjoying that.
We’re rising to the challenge, hopefully, so we need to keep working hard, keep our feet on the ground and keep going, and that’s what we’ll do.
There are a number of reasons for our progression – they’ve got a terrific manager and a really good, talented squad of players who have had good success over the past few years.
Going to Anfield is going to be difficult, as it always is, but it’s the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup and a big game for everybody associated with the Club, so hopefully we can go and put in a good performance and the right result.
Success and winning gives you a couple of things – it makes you hungry for more and it gives you a feeling that you’re capable of doing it and being successful and winning things.
I think that’s been the case for our good run in the Europa League and we’ve done the business there.
We’re in the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup so we’re in a good place at the moment, we’re hungry and looking to improve on that.
I think if you’re a ‘good cup team’ then that’s a positive thing.
I think that the fact we’ve finished seventh and sixth in recent years suggests we’re also a ‘good league team’ as well, so if we can marry the two we can come up with that we’re not a bad team.
We’ve still got work to do and things to improve, but I think over the last two-and-a-half years that we’ve shown that we’re a decent team capable of winning games and going deep into competitions, so we’ve got confidence from that and Wednesday will be another big game.
Confidence comes a number of things.
Ultimately, it’s your preparation and your results, so if you can trust your process and what you’ve done, you can build on that and it gives you the belief that one, you’re capable of doing it and two, you can do it again. So, I think that’s probably where we’re at in terms of a Club, a squad, the players and staff.
We’ve got some good players here, international players who have had good success and won things at other clubs, so they’re used to it and when they came to West Ham that’s what we knew they were going to bring.
That hopefully gives us a good chance of success.
Anfield is a really difficult place to go, as our record suggests, and if it was the same group of players who had been going there for the last 60 years then we’d be in trouble!
So, we’ve got a new group of players going up there and there is no reason to have any trepidation and we won’t have any mindset other than ‘this will be a tough game and we’re going to have to play well to win the game’.
Our record is not great there, but hopefully we’ll change that.
The likes of Lucas Paquetá, Mohammed Kudus, Edson Álvarez and Jarrod Bowen have received support from the rest of the players.
They are obviously terrific players in their own right and we’re delighted they’re here and they’re supported by another group of players who are also doing the job well and support each other as it goes.
We’re delighted we’ve got them and the supporters are happy they’re playing well, so long may it continue.
