Why the League Cup still has its place in English football

It was once the equal of the FA Cup, and even in its current form it acts as a vital harbinger of the future
Liverpool celebrate winning the Milk Cup
Liverpool celebrate with the Milk Cup. Photograph: Peter Robinson/Empics/PA Photograph: Peter Robinson/PA

Another week of League Cup fixtures, another wave of indifference. Teams of second-stringers battle half-heartedly in barely half-full stadiums, in matches covered apologetically by television and previewed unenthusiastically on websites and in the papers.

It's something approaching shameful that it's come to this. Because while the League Cup was always going to be the third-choice trophy in English football, over the years it's been a wonderful competition. And, if you're feeling charitable, it still is.

The trophy has certainly delivered over the years, arguably more so than the FA Cup since 1960, when the Football League secretary, the notoriously petty xenophobe Alan Hardaker, founded the League Cup in a fit of pique. Incandescent with rage at the likes of Matt Busby and Stan Cullis - who were more interested in exploring Europe than staying at home - moaning how it used to be better when Victoria was on the throne, Hardaker crowbarred the competition into the fixture list, in the vain hope the glamour of Europe would pall.

It did not, and so Hardaker's Folly, as it became known, was shunned by the big boys for pretty much the same reason it is now. Though with both eyes on the league and possible European glory, at least the Manchester Uniteds and Liverpools were more up front and honest in those days: they simply didn't bother entering.

The cup's first few years were, as a result, pretty much a waste of time, Aston Villa, Norwich, Birmingham, Leicester, Chelsea and West Brom winning tournaments quickly forgotten. But then in 1967 something changed - the winner would be awarded a European place.

The first final under the new system was as memorable as any English cup competition has produced, Rodney Marsh and Queens Park Rangers turning round a two-goal deficit to shock West Bromwich Albion 3-2. Heaping irony upon irony, QPR were then in the third division, and as such barred from entering the Fairs Cup the following season.

A similar fate befell Swindon Town two years later, as Don Rogers ripped Arsenal a new aperture in another classic shock. With Swindon also in the third division, the result inadvertently spawned the Anglo-Italian Cup, allowing Swindon to have a jolly day out in Naples, where the local fans threw breeze blocks at their head, piqued that Town were 3-0 up against Napoli. The game was abandoned, the trophy heading back to Wiltshire.

Two classic finals plus two memorable shocks in three years of serious competition is not a bad return, yet the League Cup had yet to enter its real imperial phase. Over the next two decades it gave us:

The greatest goal in any English cup final, Dennis Tueart's scissor kick in Manchester City's 2-1 win over Newcastle in 1976.

An unprecedented run of cup success: Liverpool enjoyed an unbeaten cup run between 1981 and 1984, winning the trophy four times.

Some of the most esoteric pre-match preparation ever known: Nottingham Forest won two League Cups half-pissed, Brian Clough making sure the team enjoyed a few isotonic image-softeners before the 1978 and 1979 finals.

Oxford United's swashbuckling demolition of QPR, Oxford years later becoming the only major trophy winners to end up playing non-league football (unless you count Wimbledon, which we probably should).

And the most dramatic and unlikely turnaround Wembley ever saw (the Matthews final doesn't count, not least because Bolton were effectively playing with 10 men), as Arsenal embarrassed Luton in 1988 for 83 minutes in the most one-sided final ever, before Ray Harford's side turned the tide with a little help from Gus Caesar.

(Compare and contrast to the FA Cup's oft-cited golden age, the 1970s, which produced less a series of great matches than a series of hilarious giant-killing results: Sunderland over Leeds, Ipswich over Arsenal, Southampton over Manchester United, Manchester United over Liverpool.)

And that's only the finals. Outside of those, well, take your pick, but it's a moot point whether the FA Cup has given us a result as stunning as champions-elect Arsenal crashing 6-2 at home to upcoming Manchester United. Or anything as preposterously dramatic as the Spurs-Arsenal semi of 1987, which had last-minute goals all over the shop - and inspired Nick Hornby into producing the game's greatest piece of literature (come on, let's not be iconoclastic, yes it is).

Since then, there's been a marked decline in quality for sure, with many of the top teams fielding line-ups insulting to both opposition and fans (as any Manchester United season-ticket holder forced to pay to attend last season's farce against Coventry City will agree). But the tournament still retains a level of importance, if only as a harbinger of things to come.

In 2001, Liverpool scrambled to a League Cup win over Birmingham, the first of Gerard Houllier's infamous five-though-it's-only-three-actually-isn't-it cup haul. The Anfield side were a bit of a joke throughout the 1990s; since that treble-cup-winning season, they've been a major player again.

Chelsea had won nothing for five years before Jose Mourinho came along and landed the 2005 trophy; within a couple of months they'd won their first league title for half a century.

In 2006, Manchester United rolled over Wigan, a victory which doesn't linger in the memory much, but did give the post-Keane side built round Wayne Rooney its first taste of glory. They've not done badly since.

And while Leicester City may not have built on their successes of 1997 and 2000, Martin O'Neill certainly did.

Building a culture of winning is vitally important - it's why Brian Clough always remembered Nottingham Forest's 1975 Anglo-Scottish Cup win more fondly than their league title and European Cups - and the League Cup has always offered that. (It gave Don Revie his first Leeds trophy in 1968. Meanwhile Arsenal have never looked back from their 1987 win; Liverpool, the first real chink in their armour exposed, often have longingly.)

Who knows what it would have done for Juande Ramos, had Tottenham Hotspur given him some proper time?

Scott Murray is co-author of Day Of The Match: A History Of Football In 365 Days (Boxtree)