Liverpool won the Carling Cup last season, and its reputation as a second-tier trophy looks set to stay that way.
For years the League Cup has been an afterthought for a number of top clubs, even Premier League teams at the bottom half of the table decide it an irrelevance and play their reserves.
It shouldn’t be, the chance to win silverware is a valuable one, although just how prestigious this particular trophy is, is an issue open to debate.
There is surely no argument that it ranks third below the Premier League and FA Cup in terms of importance domestically, but in recent years it had started to bounce back after being largely discarded by the top teams in the mid-to-late nineties.
Leicester City (twice), Middlesborough, and Blackburn Rovers all became unlikely winners, and even Chelsea and Tottenham’s wins in ’98 and ’99 came quantified that neither of them were challenging in the league at the time.
Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool won it in 2001, providing an exception to the rule of the league’s challengers not taking it seriously, as one of three trophies the Frenchman led the club to that year along with the FA Cup and UEFA Cup. Liverpool would win it two years later convincingly against Manchester United.
It was not though until a Chelsea side led by Jose Mourinho won it two years later in 2005 against Liverpool in a hotly contested game in Cardiff that you got the feeling the League Cup was being given a new lease of life.
Chelsea went onto win the league two months later, and the victory was viewed as being part of a key stepping stone in their success. A year later Manchester United won the cup, the first of three victories in a five year stretch.
Between 2001 and 2010, the Legaue Cup was won twice by Liverpool, twice by Chelsea, three times by United, and once by a resurgent Spurs, showing that the big sides were taking it seriously, and it was a trophy almost as important as the FA Cup.
Well, if that was its recovery, the last two years could be viewed as it’s downfall.
When Birmingham City beat Arsenal 2-1 in 2011, it was an unforgettable moment for supporters at the time, yet months later it did not matter a jot, with the Blues relegated.
In fact the win was actually described as a key reason in their relegation, causing the squad to take their foot off the gas in the league and drop crucial points. Celebrations had turned to tears for the Blues, and they are yet to recover.
Liverpool won it this year, and it should have been viewed as a success, with Dalglish winning the club’s first silverware in six years – the 2006 FA Cup the last one.
In many ways FSG’s decision whether or not to stick with Dalglish was the acid test of how relevant the League Cup was to supporters and owners of a big club.
If any one mocked Liverpool fans for celebrating winning the trophy, they were wrong to, it remains a difficult competition to win, one which Arsenal have not managed since 1993, and one which Manchester City’s vast array of stars could not accomplish this season.
However with Liverpool falling short in the league, well short, in eighth position scoring just 47 goals, and losing the FA Cup too – their sole high point of the season was their League Cup win over Cardiff City.
When FSG sacked Dalglish, they essentially said the trophy was irrelevant. It was not enough to save the manager.
Fans will likely agree too, the trophy alone was not enough to offer a glimmer of hope for next season, while with any other of the domestic trophies- the result would have been different.
Now the Carling Cup is no more, named the Capital One Cup for next season. It will hope to improve its standing in the football world next season and beyond, but we are not betting on it.
FSG only confirmed what many believe, that the trophy is second rate and little to crow about, irrespective of how easy or difficult it is to win.
After the last two years and a drab name change, the chances of supporters caring if their club is eliminated from the competition will stay slim to none.
Has the League Cup’s importance taken a battering over the last two seasons? When was the last time you felt it was relevant?
image: © joncandy
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