By David Butler
With AVB labelling Tottenham’s Capital One Cup clash with Aston Villa tonight as ‘impossible’ given his clubs congested fixture list, I asked the question - how much should fans worry about winning the competition? Over the last decade, the League Cup has been viewed as an opportunity for managers of top clubs to give young talent an opportunity. The ‘Big 6’ usually see fighting on all fronts (Premier League, Europe, F.A Cup and League Cup) as a strategy that can lead to disaster as overstretched squads fail to achieve any one particular target and instead perform to an average level on all fronts. This is in contrast to smaller Premier League clubs who often see the competition as a potential route to Europe (outside of the league) and a source of much needed silverware.
Below is a table that shows the prize money for the Capital One Cup, the F.A Cup, The Premier League and the Champions League. In the case of cup competitions finishing 3rd means being a beaten semi-finalist. I acquired
the data from official websites and some newspaper articles too (that didn’t cite any sources), thus I would take the figures as estimates at best.
With AVB labelling Tottenham’s Capital One Cup clash with Aston Villa tonight as ‘impossible’ given his clubs congested fixture list, I asked the question - how much should fans worry about winning the competition? Over the last decade, the League Cup has been viewed as an opportunity for managers of top clubs to give young talent an opportunity. The ‘Big 6’ usually see fighting on all fronts (Premier League, Europe, F.A Cup and League Cup) as a strategy that can lead to disaster as overstretched squads fail to achieve any one particular target and instead perform to an average level on all fronts. This is in contrast to smaller Premier League clubs who often see the competition as a potential route to Europe (outside of the league) and a source of much needed silverware.
Below is a table that shows the prize money for the Capital One Cup, the F.A Cup, The Premier League and the Champions League. In the case of cup competitions finishing 3rd means being a beaten semi-finalist. I acquired
the data from official websites and some newspaper articles too (that didn’t cite any sources), thus I would take the figures as estimates at best.
Even if these figures are partially of the mark there is still a significant gap between the prize money for the Capital One Cup and other competitions (I couldn’t get data on the Europa League). The prize money on offer appears to match the big team’s allocation of their human resources and is probably a reason why we may not see any of the usual stars on show tonight and tomorrow.
The real incentive however to win the League Cup is of course the payments that would be received from a team’s European qualification where clubs are paid based their performance in each stage of the Europa League (there's plenty of bonuses to pick up along the way too). So maybe it's best for AVB to field the youths tonight and to worry about the prize money and subsequent European qualification on offer elsewhere.
The real incentive however to win the League Cup is of course the payments that would be received from a team’s European qualification where clubs are paid based their performance in each stage of the Europa League (there's plenty of bonuses to pick up along the way too). So maybe it's best for AVB to field the youths tonight and to worry about the prize money and subsequent European qualification on offer elsewhere.
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