Wembley: Barely into the second year of his second spell at the club he graced as a player and then manager, Kenny Dalglish has steered Liverpool to their first trophy in six years.
Liverpool beat plucky Cardiff 3-2 in a penalty shoot-out to win the League Cup at Wembley Stadium on Sunday after the teams were locked at 2-2 following extra time, giving the club their first piece of silverware since the 2006 FA Cup victory over West Ham.
With the team also in the FA Cup quarter-finals and a contender for a top-four berth in the Premier League to ensure automatic qualification into the Champions League, Dalglish has Liverpool back doing what they once did best - filling the trophy cabinet.
"Although we have won something today, that is not us finished," Dalglish said. "We don't want to stop here, we want to keep going. They (Liverpool) mean an awful lot to a lot of people."
"All we do is try to make them as happy as we possibly can. Today we have been able to do that. Hopefully it makes up for some of the days when we have not been able to."
The 60-year-old Dalglish, who is widely considered the greatest player to don Liverpool's red shirt, took the helm in January 2011 after Roy Hodgson's brief reign. By then, Liverpool had already gone five years without a trophy.
Before Dalglish quit as Liverpool manager in 1991 after his first stint, Liverpool bestrode English football in much the same way that Manchester United have in the past couple of decades. After an illustrious career as a player in which he won six league championships and three European Cups, Dalglish's six-year tenure as manager yielded three more league titles and two FA Cups.
Since then, the team has been in decline, the spectacular come-from-behind victory over AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final notwithstanding. They have endured a debilitating ownership battle, fallen out of their place among England's top four and endured the pain of watching arch-rivals Manchester United surpass their record of 18 English league titles.
Last season, Manchester United overtook Liverpool after winning their 19th league title. When Dalglish ended his first tenure as manager, Liverpool were leading their bitter rivals by a seemingly insurmountable 18 titles to 7.
With Sunday's victory, Liverpool have equaled Manchester United in the number of domestic cup competitions won. Both clubs have now won 15 titles in total in the FA Cup and League Cup.
Liverpool's one remaining bragging point is the five European Cup titles compared to Man United's three.
"We wanted this trophy so desperately," Dirk Kuyt said. "It was incredible, an incredible day. This is why I came to Anfield. To finally get my first medal at Wembley is great. Hopefully we can get one more later in the season."
The task of returning Liverpool to somewhere approaching their former heights is not going to be easy, and Dalglish is reluctant to promise a return to the glory days, but says he hopes the victory will act as the launchpad for more success.
"If you do something you enjoy, you're going to want more of it," he said. "I think that's logical, it's not to say it's going to happen."
The English footballing world is a very different place to the one that Dalglish inhabited in his previous incarnation at the club he first joined in 1977, in the aftermath of Liverpool's maiden European Cup triumph.
The arrival of the Premier League in 1992 heralded an era of big money and constant monitoring from the media.
Dalglish, one of the most skillful players to ever come out of Britain, has been accused of being out of touch following Luis Suarez's ban for racism, a scandal that forced the club and its manager to issue apologies about the way it was handled.
However, his latest triumph ensures Liverpool are making news for the right reasons.
He joins Manchester United's Alex Ferguson and former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho as the only managers to have won all three of English football's top domestic competitions: the league, the FA Cup and the League Cup.
The real proof of the pudding, though, will be whether Dalglish, 14 months into a second spell as manager, can restore the Anfield club to serious challengers for the league title they have not won since 1990.
"This is the first trophy we've won for six years," said Dalglish. "Now we will work even harder and see where that takes us."
"The idea six years ago wasn't to go six years without winning another cup but now we have the flavour of it again, we want to come back and win more of them."
"We will go back to work after the internationals and see if we can kick on from here. I don't think anybody would win a trophy and come away from it and say, 'I didn't enjoy it and wouldn't want to win it again'. If you enjoy it you want more of it."
Dalglish's new big-money signings, the likes of 35 million-Pound striker Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson, have also struggled to make an impact at Anfield.
"For them to walk away with a trophy in their first season, that's a great credit to them," said Dalglish, who won three league titles in his first stint as Liverpool manager. "This is the culmination of 14 months hard work."
Liverpool, who have now won the League Cup a record eight times, have also reached the FA Cup quarter-finals.
"We won't accept just this, we need more, we want more," added Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard, who crowned his first visit to Wembley in a club shirt by lifting the trophy.
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