Why the Carling Cup is still important to English football

By Ian Winwood

Published 14:27 26/08/11

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At the time, it seemed that Birmingham City scoring a last-minute winner against Arsenal and lifting the Carling Cup was one of the great moments of last season. An unfashionable team who desired the trophy simply for its own sake – and not as some gateway that would lead to other prizes – standing triumphant on the podium at Wembley proved that not everything is always rooted in the favour of the Big Boys.

Just six months it seems that this victory by the second team from the second city is the worst possible thing that could have happened in the name of the Carling Cup.

Why? Because less than three months after lifting the trophy, Birmingham City were relegated to the Championship.

For some reason, it has now been accepted that the handful of extra games that the St Andrews club played en route to their Wembley triumph were the very things that caused them to go down.

The notion is that if Birmingham City hadn’t bothered with ideas above their station then they would today still be in the Premier League.

So pervasive is the argument that it appears almost to have become fact.

For this reason, and a few others, this season the Carling Cup has taken a Hell of a beating.

On Tuesday night Queen’s Park Rangers were turfed out of the competition at the feet of League 1 side Rochdale. The 2-0 defeat was witnessed at Loftus Road by a crowd of just 4,775 supporters, although admittedly each person paid a million pounds for their ticket.

It was with his usual good grace that Hoops manager Neil Warnock commented that he was “pleased to be out of the competition,” adding that the tournament was “not a priority for us”.

“I don’t think people care about the competition,” he huffed.

To be truthful, highlights of this week’s Carling Cup matches seemed to support Warnock’s assertion. Banks of empty seating from the Reebok Stadium to Ewood Park, from Upton Park to the New Den show that, at this point in the season, this tournament is the kind of affair that appeals only to the most hardcore of fans.

But to me, that’s not quite the point. The Carling Cup starts at a time when things are really just bedding in. If a team gets knocked out, it’s not the end of the world. As such, fans take an interest that is only merely passing.

But that’s not to say that it stays that way. By the time the Cup reaches its later stages, the teams still involved, and the fans of the teams still involved, begin to take it seriously. The spectre of Wembley’s giant arch shimmers into view, and dreams of European competition are spoken of as something that might well become a reality.

What’s more, the final itself is an occasion ripe with promise. It comes at the end of what is often a long and cruel winter. It is the first showcase event of the season, and heralds the beginning of football’s exhilarating home-stretch: the race for the title, for the top four places, for the FA Cup and for the Champions League.

The starting gun for all of these prizes is begun in earnest by the kick-off of the Carling Cup Final. Without it the season would lose much of its shape.

There are plenty of people who feel that this competition has no worth. And that’s fine. The fact that some of these people manage football teams is a shame, but it’s not the end of the world. For many of us, the Carling Cup is an undervalued treasure, and one that proves its worth as the days begin to get lighter.

Long may it remain.

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