The League Cup is often criticised. Where the FA Cup has prestige and romance, the League Cup is all too often viewed as an inconvenience, a tournament that clutters early season schedules with little reward.
Winning the Carabao (or whatever sponsor’s name it holds) Cup is downplayed. It is a cliché to not care when you’re knocked out, but there’s some truth in that.
Clubs, focused on the millions at stake for promotion, in the Premier League or in Europe, often show no more than a token interest in English football’s least-valued competition.
The ‘big six’ have won 14 of the last 16 League Cups. Birmingham’s shock win in 2011 and Swansea’s thrashing of Bradford in the 2013 final are the only exceptions to the supremacy of England’s richest football clubs.
Remove Premier League Big Boys
The European teams already get a benefit of joining the competition late, a favourable bye aiding their chances of lifting the trophy.
There are legitimate reasons for this – helping the teams competing in the Champions League and Europa League is something done around Europe. Partly because of their power, partly to improve coefficients.
The teams with greater resources than everyone else, receiving yet more finances from their European jaunts, already have sufficient advantage.
Manchester City can already take players from the majority of Premier League clubs at their will. Chelsea can splash the cash on Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Ben Chilwell. When their world-record goalkeeper underperforms, they simply buy another.
It would be naïve to pretend those clubs will have their bye taken away. Given the additional fixtures they play in Europe, taking a match off their schedule is justifiable to a degree.
There are other means to attempt to level the playing field, however. The most drastic option would be to remove them from the League Cup altogether.
That would give a brutal hit to the prestige of the competition, and it would only further its image as a second-rate trophy, but it opens up possibilities.
Bottom half Premier League teams and the best Championship sides will still be underdogs when they face Everton or Wolves.
They are still fighting against a financial disparity, but their chances of overcoming either of those sides are much greater than they are of beating even a weakened Manchester City or Liverpool.
If that is too crude a measure, some form of handicap could be imposed on the European teams.
We’re not talking about starting two goals behind or anything like that, but they could have a quota of under-21 players they have to start, or maybe they can only use players who have played below a certain percentage of Premier League minutes this season.
It’s still imperfect, of course. The ‘big six’ often throw a group of youngsters into League Cup action anyway, and even players who are rarely used in the league, such as Olivier Giroud, are more than capable of beating most top flight sides.
One Leg Semi-Finals
This takes us onto a more subtle tweak. Semi-finals being played at Wembley is often a hot topic in FA Cup betting.
In the League Cup, the round has previously been played over two legs in January. With the 2020/21 season starting late, they have moved to a one-leg semi-final, a change that should stick long-term.
The timing of the matches can cause some manic schedules. Throwing a two-legged tie in just after the unhealthily intense festive period is silly.
More importantly, though, having two matches will favour the stronger team. They have the chance to redeem from a poor performance, or to throw their best players into the tie in the second match if it’s heading in the wrong direction.
Aston Villa defied this logic to beat Leicester in the semi-finals in 2019/20, but for the most part, it makes upsets less likely.
Hull, Everton and Sheffield United have all fallen at the semi-finals to superior opposition since 2014/15 despite winning or drawing one of the legs. Perhaps one of them sneaks into the final if it’s a one-legged tie.
It’s rare the ‘big six’ fall before the semi-finals without facing one another.
Removing one of the semi-final matches seems an obvious, and frankly overdue, move, but it probably doesn’t do enough to bring unpredictability to the League Cup without other changes to the earlier rounds.
Does It Serve A Purpose?
There are alterations that can make the League Cup better. Perhaps, though, it’s just a competition that has run its course, a cup unable to grasp any relevance amid the hundreds of millions on offer for promotion and European places.
Having more silverware for teams to win seems like a good thing, but that only works if there’s a degree of randomness.
The League Cup, in its current guise at least, doesn’t have that. It’s a competition for the top teams, and even they are barely interested in it a lot of the time.
Too often the League Cup betting favourites are left fighting it out in the last four. There are concerns with top team dominance in the FA Cup too, but it’s just as prevalent in the League Cup.
How can the League Cup be improved? #CarabaoCup
— 888sport (@888sport) September 15, 2020
The strength in depth of the country’s wealthiest sides is important, of course, as is the timing of the competition.
Teams are still finding their feet when the League Cup begins. In some cases, players are still working up to match fitness, and the majority of teams are yet to understand what the season holds for them.
The lure of resting and rotating for the uninspiring midweek ties is too great. The competition needs changes. One-leg semi-finals is a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, though, how many fans would miss the League Cup? It’s not a tournament that excites supporters, and that sentiment appears similar among many involved with clubs.
Maybe the League Cup is just living on borrowed time. It could be gone, or it could be unrecognisable in five years’ time.
Credit for the main photo belongs to Matt Dunham / Pool via AP*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 1st October 2020
