Totally Football Show. Today, League Cup. We sought the caribus from the Carabow-wows, Spurs, Saints, Colchester, Chelsea. There's big midweek news from the continent with another KO for Leo and, of course, our big weekend Premier League preview. It's Man United Arsenal again.

The gunners, fresh from the biggest defeat of Forest since Bolsonaro, will they put Old

Trafford to the torch?

It's all in the Totally Football Show, in association with Paddy Power.

Hello there, listener.

On board for you today, we've got Michael Cox,

who's in for a sick Daniels story,

and also long-haired Eurocentric James Horncastle.

They'll be with us shortly.

But here right now, the man from up to Duncan Alexander.

Hi, James. Hi, Duncan. And Nick Miller as well. Hello, James. Hello, Nick. Great news. If you weren't listener across Tuesday and Wednesday's drama in the League Cup, don't worry because Nick was, and you're here to round it all up for us, Nick. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Early question then. This is from Hugh McCarthy. Hello, Hugh. Game per game is the League more entertaining and interesting than the Champions League, boom. No. No, I don't think so. We kind of have this discussion most years about whether it's more entertaining than the FA Cup. After a season, well, last season in the season we had in the Champions League, I don't think you can really say that it's... Failed floodlights, penalty shootouts, league two winners over Premier League's side. Crazy. A man meeting a horse. It does feel round three of the League Cup does feel like the official start of autumn. I know meteorologists disagree.

I've got their own methods.

But it does this, you know, it's actually got dark before the games kick off. Right. So there's normally some sort of a few, I was going to say sort of giant killings, but it's not, is it? Because you get a weird scenario where the big teams play reserves. Yes. This is going to be the first time ever that round four has got no championship teams in it

which is quite indicative of how they've sort of given up on the league cup. That is interesting. Speaking of getting up on the league cup, I don't know if you saw last week, the French Football Federation voted to get rid of their league cup altogether. I mean, if you look around Europe, who does have a League Cup beyond their

kind of Federation Cup? It's just England now. Just England, yeah. Oh, no, there's one in Portugal,

I think. Is there? I think. Yeah, Portugal's still got one. Okay. I saw our friend Rory Smith actually

saying that a lot of people saying it was, you know, modern football is killing the League Cup,

but obviously the League Cup was basically brought in to, you know, allow clubs to use their floodlights that they installed in the early 60s and late 50s. Would you miss it, Duncan? Do you think autumn would happen all the same? I think they should maybe do it like some countries do or used to where they kind of compress it

into smaller periods and maybe if you had it all like greenland have it in a week yeah maybe have it as a

they they experimented with having the first round before the league season started um for a bit which

didn't seem to capture anyone's imagination but i mean there's because you watch anything before the league

season begins.

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