I can give you three good reasons why we should take this cup seriously.
- We sustain the winning habit.
- It provides fridge squad members with the chance to excel.
- It allows our manager and coaching staff an opportunity to experiment.
So let me now expand on this general theme. We all know the feel-good factor that comes with winning matches. It feeds through the ranks like a wildfire. The more our teams keep winning the stronger the resolve. We witnessed this last season when once Kieran McKenna was installed, the under 23s and youth teams began to improve rapidly. This was no coincidence. It is a collective responsibility to succeed. Nobody wants to walk into the staff canteen feeling low and embarrassed because they have let the side down. That winning habit transcends throughout the club and is good for club morale. Everyone is now very upbeat, and there is positivity in the air everywhere.
The second reason is perhaps more obvious. The longer you stay in a competition like this, the greater the chance of pitting your wits against one of the bigger fish. It enables the manager and his staff to give game time to players who are on the fridges of the first team – or spend most of their days bench-warming. The players know that this might be their only chance to impress and play a full 90 minutes, and of course, some players are not keen on going out on loan. It means uprooting and it’s unsettling.
Staying in the Carabao Cup allows the manager and his coaching staff to experiment with new systems or formations, and employ some tactical tricks that might be considered too risky in their league campaign. They can be more inventive with some of those training techniques that they would not normally employ when points are at stake. It gives the manager license to test ideas that have not yet reached fruition. He may play a defender in midfield, or vice versa, or push a midfielder further forward. All things are possible here, and the players have a chance to truly express themselves.
