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.
Tonight, the onus is on Mikel Arteta and David Moyes to ensure Thursday's sunrise does not bring with it the same regret, both managers with, theoretically, bigger fish to fry but who would be unwise to pass up the opportunity of a competition as wide open as the Manchester United midfield.
When Arsenal were knocked out by Brighton at the earliest opportunity last term, there was under-table first-pumping among Gunners fans, already fretting by then about how a thin squad could possibly stay the course on all fronts having bolted out of the gate to unexpectedly make the title race’s early running.
If you ask fans what the priority would be, it wouldn’t be the Carabao Cup for sure.
Perhaps the way things panned out will have moved the dial, but Arteta conceded on Tuesday that minds dreaming of Premier League or Champions League glory may not be for changing.
“I don’t know if we can convince them,” he said. “If you ask about what the priority would be, it wouldn’t be the Carabao Cup for sure.”
For his players, though, the attitude must be different. The Gunners, for all their progress of the past two seasons, have not won a major trophy since the 2020 FA Cup, a campaign from which only a handful of players, mainly academy graduates on the periphery at the time, remain.
Arteta has since made a conscious effort to add serial winners to his dressing room, with players such as Gabriel Jesus, OIeksandr Zinchenko and Jorginho brought in to aid an inexperienced squad. Kai Havertz arrived this summer with a European trophy on his CV, as did Declan Rice, who could make his first return to his former club this evening, but is expected to start on the bench.
As a group, though, this Arsenal are yet to taste major success and there is no telling the boost that springtime silverware could offer a title challenge, as Arteta knows well from his time at City, where the Carabao Cup was a long-let resident.
“I don’t think I have three World Cup winners in the squad that can think like this about the Carabao Cup,” Arteta said on Tuesday, when asked whether his players might turn their noses up at the competition. “I might be wrong, but I don’t think anyone can think like that. I think that would be very, very arrogant.”
For West Ham the incentive is similarly clear. Early evidence suggests the Hammers may be short of the depth and quality required to sustain a European challenge in an unusually strong top half of the Premier League, but also comfortably better than the team that battled relegation for much of last term.
Mid-table, if it is their fate, could become a place of almost tedious comfort, but Moyes’s side have proven themselves a fine cup team with successive deep runs in Europe and the delights of Prague, only months old, must surely be whetting the appetite once more.
“Most managers would consider the order of priority to be the Premier League, Europe and Carabao Cup,” said Moyes agreed yesterday. “But every cup competition is an opportunity. When we won the Conference League, that comes from getting through the group and then trying to win the next round, and before you know it you’re through. It’s the same in this cup competition. If we can keep progressing, then we get closer to the final.”
City and league leaders Tottenham are already out, while one of United and Newcastle will fall by the wayside tonight. Victory at London Stadium this evening comes with twin prizes of progress and ousting another lead contender, too.
