Are United restoring excitement to the Carling Cup?

The Carling Cup isn’t taken very seriously by the ‘big’ teams, at least that is the perception anyway

Usually a testing ground for young players, those on the way out and players on the road back from injury, it is felt that the cup isn’t given the respect it deserves but the tide is slowly changing and United have a lot to do with this.

I won’t sit here and lie to you ad say that we play our first and strongest 11 in every Carling Cup game but due to a combination of the teams we field and the opponents we have been drawn with we have been great value for money in the competition over the last few seasons.

Having won the competition 3 times in the last 5 years fielding a variation of teams that have included youth, experience as well as first teamers I don’t think we can be classed as one of the teams that have ‘disrespected’ the competition.

As big a part as team selection plays, you’ll need to have worthy opponents in front of you too (it may sound arrogant and I don’t mean it to be in anyway but there are some games that simply won’t capture the imagination) and the fact we have played the likes of Everton, Aston Villa, Tottenham as well as the huge derby with City in the semi final of last year’s competition has meant that we have had some pretty entertaining games in the competition.

The semi final last season was a huge event because of the background story and in terms of on field action it didn’t fail to deliver. City’s wealth, the Tevez/Neville incident as well as Tevez scoring against his former club and late goals meant that the tie, which was also partly played out on terrestrial TV, was one of the moments of the season. That’s not something you can say every year in regards to the competition.

Tomorrow we begin another campaign in the competition to retain the trophy and from video iPods to sock suckers I’m willing to bet it won’t be void of action whether we win the competition or not.