The Football League Cup has now been given soccer's supreme accolades a Wembley appearance.

It's a far cry from the days when everyone laughed at the competition and said that it would never succeed.

Now, it has not only succeeded, but it's commanded a Wembley date, and everyone will be

shocked if a gate today does not top 70,000. I'm Jonathan Wilson, I'm with Rob Draper, and that

was Kenneth Wilson home, writing in the Radio Times about the League Cup final in 1967.

And today, as we build up to Sunday's League Cup final, we're going to be looking at six of our favourite League Cup Final memories, three each. I don't think it'll come as surprised to anybody that Rob's favourite is what we're going with first. And that's, is it KPR winning in 1967, Rob? It's the most important League Cup Final of all time. As you well know, Jonathan, it's the most thrilling. It's a

groundbreaking final. It ticks all the boxes. It should be the first one we talk about. This is

not my prejudice. I absolutely believe this is a crucial game in football's history, but a little

bit of prehistory. The League Cup is only set up in 1961 by Alan Hardacre, the Secretary of Football League.

And essentially, it's exactly like when we get

extra games in the Champions League now or World Club Cup, they just want to make more money and play

more games. So whenever this comes up, and people get all sacrosanct about like, oh, you can't mess with

the League Cup fixtures. I mean, being the age I am, I wasn't quite around in 1961, but I'm kind of like, it's not a special tournament other than the fact that it's QPR's only major trophy. It's like, it was just a made-up tournament to make some more cash, so I'm not that worried about what they do with it. And it's made up then, of course, because clubs have floodlights. So they want to use them in midweek to get big crowd. Midweek crowds.

You know, we talked about the Wolves-Honbid game back before Christmas in 954. And what a draw that was. Floodlit football was exciting. And, yeah, I guess if you can't get big foreign teams coming over for glamorous friendlies, the next best thing is to arrange games between QPR and Rotherham or whatever. Excuse me, we're in the final, but anyway. And Rotherham got to the very first final. That's why I did. Yes, they did. That's very true. And that is one of the things I like about the League Cup, which we'll talk about later. But here's the thing, the early finals are two-legged affairs. This is where the old two-legged, the semis of finals comes from. They're not at Wembley. But there's very much an effort to revive. It's sort of flagging a little bit, I think, or it's not really caught on, as they'd rather hoped it. And to help it catch on,

they decide to move the showpiece final to Wembley in 1967, okay? And this is significant,

because QPR, who are top of what is in the third division now would be League 1,

reach the final, which is, it's really, you know, obviously a huge breakthrough for a third-tier club to be being a Wembley final. It's not quite the FA Cup final, but it's a significant achievement.

They're managed by the great Alex Stock of Yovil and QPR. Yeah, one of the great managers of his

era. Well, Alex Stock, let's get this out there straight away. He was the man he masterminded

Yoval's victory over Sunday in the 949 in the fourth round of the FA Cup. And of course,

he's also, perhaps most famous, as the inspiration for the Fasho character, Bond Manager.

Yeah, absolutely. I've got to say, he is that straight out of central casting. It's a 1960s, 50s manager, isn't he? But he's got a great QPR team. Actually, Rodney Marsh is in this team. Les Allen, who's one of double of Tottenham, is in this team. Obviously, coming down the other end of his football career. And the quote you read out of the beginning with Kenneth Walsonson writing in the Radio Times because this game is going to be televised on match in a day later in the evening.

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