There were some shock results in the first round of the League Cup tonight, with the most surprising probably being last year’s play off semi finalists Brentford’s 4-0 humbling at home to League 2 Oxford United.
Seven Championship sides were eliminated overall in the first round so far, with other shocks including Barnet’s 2-1 win over Millwall after extra time. Seeing as not even Championship sides are aiming for it, and many Premier League clubs don’t care, is it time to end the League Cup?
For those who know me, you probably know of my personal vendetta against the competition, probably stemming from Arsenal’s League Cup final losses in 2007 and 2011 to Chelsea and Birmingham respectively. Even without those final losses, it isn’t a competition that I would ever value, as it doesn’t have the magic of the FA Cup. I think that the only domestic cup competition should be the FA Cup and that the League Cup merely provides a distraction to clubs, and partly devalues the FA Cup.
What do you mean by it devalues the FA Cup? Well, when Spurs and Chelsea both booked their places at Wembley for the League Cup final last year they both went on to lose in the FA Cup fourth round, Spurs lost to Leicester at home and Chelsea were humbled 4-2 at home by League 1 Bradford City. I think that the trophy just distracts from the centre pieces of English football, the Premier League and the FA Cup.
England is one of only 2 of the five main European footballing countries to have a League Cup competition, along with France. Germany abolished the LigaPokal in 2007 (it was called the League Cup but was more of a pre season competition with the top five in the Bundesliga face the DFB Pokal winner), Spain ended their League Cup after four seasons in the 1980s and Italy have never had a League Cup competition. Seeing as football has worked in those countries without a League Cup competition why doesn’t England do the same?
I think that ending the League Cup would increase competition in both the FA Cup and the Premier League as teams will put both effort into trying to win the former and Europa League qualification via the latter.
Ending the competition is something I can’t see happening anytime soon, but I think that now the time is right to focus on two domestic trophies, not a less important, sub standard third competition as well.
The Blackstock Blog 
i’d argue it’s more about the Champions League. It was a big deal when we beat Liverpool to won it in 1987, and the fa cup was more special too. It should be annulled, since it gets in the way, and there are other competitions that we can focus on.