It will take something special to win the Premier League this season, as it will every year for as long as Manchester City are around in their current, Pep Guardiola-led guise, and perhaps, given the hopeless starts of all three newly promoted clubs, something even more spectacular to drop out of it.
There must surely, then, have been more than a couple of top-flight managers who woke up on Wednesday morning to find Championship Middlesbrough and League One Port Vale as the first two names in the Carabao Cup’s quarter-final hat and snarled at the thought of one that got away.
