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Cards
on the table. If the League Cup were a horse, we’d have shot
it by now. It’s a dying animal, in the last stages of a fairly
distressing decline, thrashing about in its stable with precious
idea of what its purpose in life is any more. Better by far, surely,
to let it pass quietly away into the history books?
Like Congress setting a deadline for troop withdrawal - bad analogy,
but you get the idea - perhaps we should put a limit on it, letting
everyone know that closing time is coming. This is the 48th running
of the competition - you can see where I’m going with this
already can’t you? - so why not say that the League Cup competition
for 2009/10 is the final one, bringing us to a nice round 50. If
you want to get your name on the trophy, if you want to make a little
bit of history, time is running out. It might at least bring a little
intensity to things for a little while.
Way back when, the League Cup was supposed to be a competitor to
the age old FA Cup, capitalising on football’s latest novelty,
floodlights, enabling us to have a midweek competition. Nobody took
it seriously to start with, the big clubs not entering, and now
we’ve come full circle, the big clubs not bothering, and sending
their third team instead.
The League Cup did a great job through the late 1960s and the 1970s,
creating the experience of the “great night under the lights”,
but once European competition started to dominate in the 1990s,
once the repellent, bloated spectacle of the Champions League took
centre stage for the big clubs and the be all and end all of Premiership
survival became the goal for a dozen “top” teams, the
die was cast. From the day that Manchester United were allowed to
field a weakened side in the competition - you used to get fined
or docked points for that in better times gone by - the League Cup
was on borrowed time. Now, there’s no more left to borrow.
It comes to something when none of us can consistently decide what
to call it. I’ve only got used to the fact that it’s the
Worthington Cup, only to discover Carling have been sponsoring it
for four years.
Before that Coca-Cola, Milk, Rumbelows - remember them? Thought
not - and Littlewoods all put the corporate moniker to it.
Crowds have stopped coming to the games, and understandably so given
that you have no idea what team you will be fielding, never mind
the opposition. Twenty-five years ago, getting a draw against Liverpool,
Manchester United or Arsenal meant that you’d see Ian Rush
or Kenny Dalglish, Pat Jennings, Bryan Robson. Now you’ll get
a squadron of pimply 17 year olds whose names you’ll try desperately
to remember so that 10 years hence, you can say, “I remember
him making his debut against us. Don’t remember him, just the
teamsheet”.
Clubs have to slash admission prices to get people in - no bad thing
- and then, if you’re unfortunate to draw a team like Cardiff,
you use up all your gate money employing the local police to take
car of them. What excitement is there any more for Rochdale to play
at home against Arsenal?
The paying punters will have no idea who any of the players are,
with the possible exception of Theo Walcott, forced to do football’s
version of community service. And even if Arsene did mistakenly
put Fabregas on his team sheet by some administrative oversight,
you’ve already seen him a million times on the box anyway.
Even the fact that there’s a UEFA Cup spot on offer at the
end of the rainbow means nothing. Chelsea or Arsenal are going to
finish up winning the thing almost accidentally anyway, and they
hardly need that place in Europe do they? No, the League Cup is
waiting or euthanasia, so let’s do the decent thing and on
its 50th birthday, let’s pull the plug.
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