But it’s Carling, Darling.

It’s that time of the year again, when the television revenues of League One and League Two sides see a massive spike and people suddenly hear about Swindon Town and Hartlepool. The trophy with a thousand names (ok, maybe slight exaggeration) is back! And no one gives a rat’s ass.

The League Cup in principle involves the 20 teams of the Premier League and 72 from the next three divisions. However, there’s so many byes involved based on so many rules, that all Premier League Clubs play only from the second round, which is the round of 64. What an idea Sirji! 20 of the last 64 is fixed. And you thought match-fixing was underhanded, illegal, not allowed and a total Kaminey thing to do. It doesn’t end there though. Teams which qualify for Europe, which happens to be 7, go directly into the THIRD round, which is the round of 32. At this point most of the Championship clubs are going ‘Hey, this is not even funny anymore’.

Admittedly, the Premier League teams field ‘weak’ sides for the competition. But the gulf in the quality between even the reserves side of United and the first team of a club which is three divisions below is pretty evident. All that considered, I really feel like it’s an unnecessary cup-hogging that the big boys do, with this Carling Cup. Instead of people who qualified for Europe going directly through, they should just be left out of the competition. I mean they already have Europe for their ‘third competition’. Feels to me like the playground bully who wouldn’t get off the swing. Let the kids have this one.

Ben Foster is apparently Player of the Tournament in last year’s Carling Cup. Clearly that’s not given him much of an inspiration by means of Premier League performances. But now since he is the No.1 man and everything now, Kuzczczcazk started United’s Carling Cup opener against Wolves. Michael ‘Derby Man’ Owen featured in the Starting XI as well. I still find it majorly funny that United’s strike pairing has come over from Merseyside. But I won’t talk anymore about it cos the Scouse will go ‘You guys are just obsessed with us’. No my dear friends, we’re not. We’re just making sure you can hear us, loud and clear.

Fabio, or Rafael, we’ll never know what they’re pulling, got himself sent off in the 30th minute for being the last man and, well, trying to spear the knees of the attacker. In his defence, the poor boy slipped while going for his first tackle and after that it was always going to be which-moment-will-get-the-red. As a trippy aside, the Carling Cup cards are round. Aren’t red cards (like the actual card) supposed to invoke a skipped heartbeat and a general feeling of deference? This one looks like a prop out of a Monty Python movie.

This scoring goals with 10 men is becoming a habit for United. Midway into the second half, up step Danny Welbeck and Michael Carrick, and the “Derby Man” with a neat little 1-2-1-2 and a supercool finish to hand United the lead and eventually the match. Apart from Carrick showing why he cost so much, the goal also resulted in Welbeck getting all Usain on us.

Usain in a football game. That’s an interesting, albeit slightly scary thought.

Into the round of 16, and more iPods, penalty shootouts and mentions of Welbeck, Macheda and Gibson to follow. Very satisfactorily, Burnley were taken out by Barnsley (the English have a slightly low imagination when it comes to names I think), making them the only well, giant-killing (snicker) of the round. But more importantly, come Saturday and it’s back to the arena where men play men. And that is Fair Play.