The Mickey Mouse Cup, the Capital One Cup or the English Football League Cup, one trophy many names is both a mocked as well as a prized trophy in English football. The tournament gives a chance to football clubs from all divisions in England to compete against each other. So one can see some upsets as well as battering of oppositions. The Premier league with all the star power and Money has always been the eventual winner but not before some minnow team from lower division has run a rampage eliminating a top division team. The tournament is a headache for the top management at big clubs for in the initial rounds on papers they are facing a small team and shouldn’t be of much worry but if you were to lose there will be wide spread criticism.
The tournament has moved on its fourth round with 16 teams left now. The highlight of Round 3 matches was reigning Premier League champions Leicester City losing out to Chelsea in a hard fought match decided in the extra time largely through Cesc Fabregas’s class act. The other casualty was Everton who were surprisingly beaten by Norwich City. No one saw it coming given the kind of form Everton has been in the Premier League but then such is the beauty of League Cup you get the unexpected.
Selected results from Round 3.
Fulham 1-2 Bristol City
Northampton 1-3 Manchester United
QPR 1-2 Sunderland
Southampton 2-0 Crystal Palace
Swansea 1-2 Manchester City
West Ham 1-0 Accrington
Stoke 1-2 Hull
Tottenham 5-0 Gillingham
Derby County 0-3 Liverpool
Everton 0-2 Norwich
Leicester 2-4 Chelsea
Newcastle United 2-0 Wolves
Nottingham Forest 0-4 Arsenal
The Fourth Round will be played in a months time on 24th October, the fixtures for the same were announced and it has made the wait for the next round real tuff. With only 16 teams left some big teams were bound to face off Liverpool will lock heads with the Spurs and the icing on the cake is another Manchester Derby, Jose v/s Pep one more time. Arsenal has been the luckiest of the lot with being lined up against Reading and should be favorites to progress to the next round.
List of Fourth round fixtures:
Arsenal v Reading
Bristol City v Hull
Leeds v Norwich
Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspurs
Manchester United v Manchester City
Newcastle v Preston
Southampton v Sunderland
West Ham v Chelsea