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Malky Mackay says he will not need to rally his Cardiff players despite their 2-0 home loss to West Ham in their Championship semi-final play-off.

Cardiff go to Upton Park for the return leg on Monday knowing their Premier League hopes hang by a thread.

"We've got a second leg of a semi-final coming up, there's no lifting needed," said Cardiff manager Mackay.

"We go into that focused and we go in and make sure that we give everything we've got."

Two goals from Jack Collison at the Cardiff City Stadium, the first a header following up his own shot and the second from a fierce deflection, handed West Ham a healthy advantage.

But Mackay says that the scoreline is not yet decisive and an early Bluebirds goal in east London can change the nature of the tie.

"We've got to make sure we go into that second leg [and score] one goal and things change, 2-0 is a dangerous score," Mackay said.

"We're a team that are certainly going to be making sure that we go there and give everything we can. We have done all season, it didn't change tonight and it's not going to change on Monday.

"We knew it was going to be a tough game for us and obviously it was, but again we've got to not concede bad goals.

"The first was a bad goal we conceded, the second was complete luck in terms of it hitting someone and going in the other direction.

"But certainly second half we really came out on the front foot and had three or four good chances that on another day one or two of them drop in.

"It looked like the momentum was with us and with the amount of chances we did have in the second half, I felt that if we got one [goal] they would certainly be on the back foot.

"We knew we had played many more games than them and we knew that they've got a vastly superior squad in terms of experience."

Cardiff supporters are again in for a nerve-wrecking afternoon at Upton Park after seeing their side suffer play-off agony in recent seasons.

City lost out to Reading at the semi-final stage last year and were beaten in the 2010 final.

The Bluebirds' inferior goal record saw them narrowly miss out on the play-offs in 2009.