Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!
There has long been a notion that the League Cup, in its many sponsorship guises, can be a “springboard” for future success. No other trophy has ever achieved springboard status, not even the Emirates Cup. It seems the idea was born around the time José Mourinho’s Chelsea were on the rise, fuelled by Roman Abramovich’s totally legitimate takeover, winning the Carling Cup in 2005 and then rocketing to back-to-back Premier League titles. Many of that Blues squad have since spoken about the three-handled Georgian silver cup as if it were some gateway drug to glory. And that Chelsea team went on some trips. You wouldn’t understand, man. We saw five trophies in two years, man.
If we were to continue the analogy, then Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal team are sitting alone in the bar, still stone-cold sober, having not had a whiff of success since the FA Cup six years ago when their starting lineup included Rob Holding, Kieran Tierney and Nicolas Pépé. None of the players who featured in that 2020 final are still at the club, with Bukayo Saka – an 18-year-old unused substitute on the day – the only survivor from the matchday squad. It feels rather apt Arsenal are now staring at the Fizzy Cup as their potential trophy-drought quencher, given the Gunners have lost more finals in the competition than anyone else, last tasting victory in 1993, before any of their players were even born. It seems distinctly weird that Arsène Wenger won seven FA Cups but never a League Cup. No springboards there.
