Wimborne Town v Crawley Town preview: Kevin Blackwell on FA Cup memories, Josh Flint and further conversations about his position

Here is everything he said in the presser.

The FA Cup is always an exciting time. Firstly, how much are you looking forward to getting out there on Sunday?

Yeah, I mean, there's always something special about the FA Cup and I've been lucky to get almost to the end of it, you know, semi-finals and that. It's magic.

So, hopefully we can perform on Saturday and I'm looking for a performance again to build on what we've started. So, hopefully that will be the case.

It’s always an interesting cup tie when you're sort of put up against lower league opposition. Perfect for us to obviously come off the back of a good result. There's a lot more confidence in the building now, isn't there? To be fair, we can't really win in this one because if we win, we should win and if we don't, we lose. The League team can't really win in this one. But it's a great day for Wimborne and we want to go there and play well. With a great respect to Wimbourne, I'm concentrating on Crawley and what our aim and our targets are and it's a little bit more than the FA Cup.

Ultimately, there's going to be an enormous amount of pressure from an external point of view, as you say, for us being the league team in this situation. It's great for Wimborne. How do you go about sort of managing the squad internally to sort of block out that external noise?

I said to them whether we were playing Fleetwood Town next or Rotherham or Liverpool in the next round of the Cup or whatever, every game's got to be treated the same. So, you prepare the same way and with Wimborne, we don't know a lot about them, but we prepared exactly as we would do for every game.

And that's what I call the professionalism that you expect from a professional football club, that whoever the opponent is, you pay them the utmost respect because we've seen many, many shocks and Fleetwood showed against Arsenal in the last round of the Carabao Cup. Believe you me, it's there and I've warned the players that if we don't match their endeavour and work hard and show why we're professional footballers, you're in for a hard day.

In terms of obviously yourself and obviously other coaching staff as well, how have you gone about the sort of analytical process for this? Because I imagine it's probably quite hard to get your hands on some clips from those leagues and they're unknown players as well.

We sent scouts to quite a few of their games. So, as I said, pay the utmost respect to Wimborne. They're having a decent season, they're on a good run and as I said, we prepared for them as we have for all the games.

Yeah, definitely and the squad in itself, probably the strongest we've had it in a while. I don't think the injury list is too long. So, again, for a tie like this, you're going to want the full squad available for selection. That must be pleasing?

That's right. Any manager will tell you, you want your squad as fit as it can be and touch wood at the moment, we've got one or two injuries, but nothing that should upset us too much.

With the game being on a Sunday as well, I suppose it gives you an extra day to get on the training ground, which for a new coach like yourself must be the most ideal thing.

Sometimes it's the game gets in the way. So, to be training with the lads is what you want. But we're on the back of two games with getting results and we want to make it three and I said, I want us to try and build a run. That is what will sort of regain our confidence as a team and as a club.

Josh Flint, he played around 15 minutes on Saturday. How did he come through that? How's he been this week? He's been good. When I came here, I'd heard that Flinty was injured.

He was trying to get back. He was out of contract and so we just put him through a bit more of a robust training to see if he could, be OK. And I'm delighted that Flinty's responded to that.

He looks a good player to me and I'm quite excited to see him play.

It's on TV on Sunday. Is that something you use in the build-up as a bit of motivation or is it something you just ignore and say it's just another game, ignore the cameras?

Every game we played is live on TV in Poland. Every game was live on TV and obviously in the Championship and the Premier League, every game is nearly also live on TV.

So, this is nothing out of the ordinary for me, but I said to the players, the cameras won't make any difference to these players. They're going to go out and just play and the big day is to Wimborne, but I don't want us to be there, to be the patsies of it all. I want us to work hard, do our job and try and get the right result.

You mentioned the magic of the FA Cup. You said you almost got to the final. What specific memories have you got of the FA Cup as a player and as a manager?

David Seaman's greatest ever save was against us in the last five minutes in the semi-final at Old Trafford against Arsenal.

Obviously managing your team in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, I was assistant to Neil [Warnock] on that one, but when I went back to Sheffield United, we got to the quarter-finals. It's the run. It's the run that can get the club going again, and when you've had it tough or things aren't going quite well, a good cup run can also help.

Many people say it can be a hindrance, but it only becomes a hindrance if you go further and further and further and the games pile up. That's when the problems arise, but certainly initially, a good cup run can be important, not just for the players.

You've got the Jersey Mikes Trophy on Tuesday. Have you already picked your starting XI for those two games or does it depend on what happens on Sunday?

It will depend slightly, but yes, we have actually already picked our two XIs and so the planning will go into Brentford straight after the game.

As I said, we will show utmost respect to every team that we play, no matter what competition, no matter what level and that's what we've continued to do.

With the good start you've had, four points in two games, have you had any more conversations about the length of time you're going to be here? Have there been any further conversations?

They had a chat with me on Thursday and I just said, look, right now things have been hectic. Games have been coming in, trying to get it and I just said, look, maybe next week before the international break, I shall sit down and have a longer chat with them about where we go with this one, but certainly at this moment in time, I'm just focussing on the games and I'm looking forward to getting past Brentford and then taking a breath, that would be nice.