Tonight we will see David Moyes’ West Ham take on Arsenal in the Carabao Cup, and it is a match Moyes cannot afford to dismiss.
Even though West Ham’s primary concern is rightly avoiding relegation in the Premier League, the Carabao Cup is a prize to be valued rather than tossed aside.
Why? Because it’s a cup! It’s a trophy! You play at Wembley in a major final with all the ensuing fanfare and then at the end you get to lift a cup. Football is enhanced by a great many things (namely style) but at base it is about winning things.
Victory is the sweetest possible elixer one can imagine. It warms the heart and energises teams to go on to achieve greater things. Players thrive on it but so do managers, especially one as hard-up for hardware as David Moyes.
The 2013 Community Shield remains the only trophy of David Moyes’ coaching career
Obviously in the case of domestic cups, the value of this success is often placed in opposition to the financial value of simply existing in the Premier League.
The effort needed for a great cup run can often physically drain and mentally distract the players from the grind of Premier League survival. It’s a kind of fiscal existential crisis whereby simply being is enough for (too many) teams.
The aversion to cup runs is somewhat understandable when looking at the FA Cup. Football’s oldest competition has a minimum of six matches to play if a Premier League side wants to win it, and that’s assuming no replays in the first two rounds.
It starts in January and runs until May with its fixtures falling on weekends meaning that Premier League games have to be rearranged and the ensuing fixture pile-up can be the difference between survival or relegation for a club like West Ham.
David Moyes’ Everton lost the FA Cup final to Chelsea in 2009.
But would a run in the Carabao Cup actually be such a burden?
West Ham have already made it to the quarter-final stage thanks to an improbable win against Tottenham in the last round. This puts them one win away from a two-legged semi-final in January that presents many opportunities to progress (that don’t even involve victory, two draws could do it).
Win that semi-final and you’re at Wembley in February playing to win a major trophy. That’s three extra games onto the schedule if you beat Arsenal, only one of which (the final itself) would cause a fixture to be rearranged. And it’s all over before March leaving the rest of the season free to focus on the grind of survival.
The Carabao Cup presents all of the bonuses of a cup run with precious little of the drawbacks. It would provide David Moyes with a glorious chance to win his first major trophy as a coach (the man himself said that the 2013 Community Shield win “belonged to Sir Alex”). and present West Ham with their first proper silverware since they won the FA Cup in 1980, thirty-seven years ago.
Winning the Carabao Cup would energise the fanbase and locker room ahead of what will certainly be a gruelling end to the season. And it would provide those loyal Irons with a cherished memory that would last a lifetime.
David Moyes absolutely must take the Carabao Cup seriously. He owes it to West Ham’s fans and, hell, he owes it to himself.
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