Huge opportunity wasted or huge waste of time avoided?

By: Martini Extra Dry | September 26th, 2008

Wednesday night saw Aston Villa crash out of the Carling Cup to lower league opposition for the fourth time in five years, losing to QPR 1-0 at Villa Park. Previous years have seen us fall to Leicester (1-0 at home also), Doncaster (3-0 away on a torrid night for Villa), Burnley (3-1 away) and only the 4-0 drubbing at Stamford Bridge sparing us the giant-killing blushes.

Having won the competition five times and twice been runners up, we are the second best performing side in the history of the competition (after Liverpool) and also being the competition’s first winners, but recently our performances have been embarrassing? Have we lost interest in this competition?

Recent years have seen a big debate build up around the League Cup and it’s importance to sides with Premier league and European ambitions. This year Villa find themselves right in the centre of that debate, being currently in the middle of a 7-games-in-three-weeks schedule, and now we’ve fallen to a lower league side, we will definitely have many saying that we didn’t want to win against QPR.

Are we better off out of the Carling Cup, leaving our squad more time to concentrate on the UEFA Cup and the Premiership? Or have we just squandered our best chance of winning some silverware this year?

The League Cup has never been the highest accolade in English football but it did used to be held in higher regard than it is now. So what has changed to make people less interested in the Carling Cup? Well, the name keeps changing for a start, so it doesn’t feel like it has a long prestigious history, like the FA Cup. The now Carling Cup has previously been known as the Worthington Cup, the Coca-Cola Cup, the Rumbelows Cup, the Littlewoods Cup, and, for the real old gits amongst you, the Milk Cup. The competition has actually been running for nearly 50 years, but most of the last thirty years has seen it change names every few seasons, so it keeps losing it’s identity.

Another thing that makes it seem less valued is the midweek placing of the games, unlike it’s big brother, the FA Cup, which gets to interrupt the Premiership’s flow and steal a weekend throughout it’s progression.

Many of the top teams now field a mainly second string side too, which takes some of the pride away from teams who do achieve a giant-killing.

It does, however, carry with it a pass to the UEFA Cup, so is it worth the effort? Should we be gutted? Or relieved?