Tonight saw the return of the Coca-Cola/Rumbelows/Littlewoods/Carling/Milk/Capital One/Worthington/EFL/Carabao Cup and Manchester’s United and City both managed to get through potentially tricky ties. This now means that, into their already overcrowded and much-complained-about calendar, they need to fit at least one more game.
The question which is obviously on everyboy’s lips is; why don’t they just throw the game if it isn’t that important?
It’s a competition used to play fringe players anyway, so they would just go back to where they came from, on the fringe.
To hear the top managers wittering on about this competition, how many games they have to play, how tired the players are and why there should be a winter break, makes us wonder why some of them don’t just throw in the towel and take up basket-weaving!
As we have said many times before, it is never the players who are heard moaning on about how many games they have to play or of feeling tired. It is a management-exclusive gripe. It is an excuse reserved solely for the use of managers, whether successful or not.
For the successful ones it is the reason they are not more successful. The others use it to explain why they are failures, unless the manager in question happens to be Ronald Koeman, who has now decided that he should have been given more games.
Anyway, United travelled to foreign parts to take on Swansea City who, for some obscure reason which is inexplicable to the likes of Rangers and Celtic, are a Welsh club in the English Premier League.
Both sides made many changes having lost at the weekend with United making seven and Swansea trumping them with eight.
The game started off predictably tight although United did look the more likely to score and did so through Lingard which, unfortunately, resulted in one of his ridiculous celebrations. So the half-time score was 0-1.
After an hour or so a smart move saw Lingard head United into a two goal lead with the inevitable idiotic celebration on display yet again. Somebody really should have a word with him about that!
The match then petered out as both sides seemed to accept the result, which would have been a disappointment to Paul Clement, and the only other talking point was the fact that Lindelof looked just as bad in this game as he did against Huddersfield.
City travelled all the way to their home ground at The Etihad, which must have seemed strange given that this was their first home tie in a cup competition since 1757.
Yes, City finally got the home draw for which they had been moaning for ages and nearly blew it!
Despite being the better team and creating the most chances the home side had to make do with a 0-0 scoreline at the break.
The second half provided more of the same with City finding it very difficult to break down this Wolves team and, in fact, it was Wolves who should have scored in the 90th minute from a counter-attack which ended with a tame effort being shot straight at Bravo.
So, 0-0 after 90 minutes and the game went to extra time.
Again the pattern was the same with City unable to find a way through and the halfway mark was reached with the score still 0-0.
Even more of the same led to the final score being 0-0 and it went to penalties.
To cut what has been a very long story short the penalty shoot-out went the way of the Premier League team who scored all of their spot kicks and won 4-1.
Meanwhile, stubborn old man faced what appeared to be an easy task against Norwich.
It was so easy, in fact, that Norwich took an early lead and held onto it for most of the game.
It wasn’t until the 85th minute that Arsenal found an equaliser through debutant Eddie Nketiah and the game went into extra time. The same player then scored again in the 98th minute and Arsenal, luckily again, were through to the quarter- finals.
Tomorrow sees Chelsea and Tottenham take on Everton and West Ham respectively, but probably not respectfully, we shall see.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 