Doubt anyone really cares, but might as well make an offical draw thread. Northampton play Wolves tonight, the draw is on after the match. 1. Arsenal 2. Aston Villa 3. Bradford City 4. Burnley 5. Burton Albion 6. Carlisle United 7. Chelsea 8. Coventry City 9. Crawley Town 10 .Doncaster Rovers 11. Everton 12. Leeds United 13. Liverpool 14. Manchester City 15. Manchester United 16. Middlesbrough 17. Milton Keynes Dons 18. Newcastle United 19. Norwich City 20. Preston North End 21. Queens Park Rangers 22. Reading 23. Sheffield Wednesday 24. Southampton 25. Sunderland 26. Swansea City 27. Swindon Town 28. Tottenham Hotspur 29. West Bromwich Albion 30. West Ham United 31. Wigan Athletic 32. Northampton Town/Wolverhampton Wanderers
Manchester United v Newcastle United Manchester City v Aston Villa MK Dons v Sunderland West Bromwich Albion v Liverpool Crawley Town v Swansea City Queens Park Rangers v Reading Norwich City v Doncaster Rovers Bradford City V Burton Albion Preston North End v Middlesbrough Arsenal v Coventry City Southampton v Sheffield Wednesday Chelsea v Wolverhampton Wanderers Carlisle United v Tottenham Hotspur Swindon Town v Burnley West Ham United v Wigan Athletic Leeds United v Everton
Couldn't be bothered with this if we're going to be drawn against prem opposition at every hurdle. I'd just use it to get our B team a run. Get Welbeck, Ando maybe Fletcher and Buttner too.
Yeah, all these sponsors are hard to keep up with. Milk, Littlewoods, Rumbelows, Coca Cola, Worthington, Carling, Capital One....... It would have been simpler (and cheapen the competition less) if they'd have done what the FA Cup now do with their sponsorship, "The FA Cup sponsored by whoever". Companies obviously wouldn't pay as much for that kind of branding but at least the FA Cup is still the FA Cup. Less confusion with it.
I agree in that it'd be easier but you can understand why they didn't, The FA cup is the oldest FA competition in the world (or somethign like that, please correct me) so it has something to uphold, the League cup is just blurgh. Why not just name our threads the League Cup and ignore the sponsor? We're under no contractual obligation
All true. It was after all only introduced as a way to make extra money after teams started installing floodlights. The last part reminds me, I think the Premier League sent a memo round a couple of years ago to managers to refer to it as the "Barclays Premier League". Talksport once picked up on Owen Coyle being very compliant, name-dropping Barclays every 5 seconds (they thought it was kind of funny). Ian Holloway was at it too.
We play this between Liverpool away and Spurs at home in a stretch of 7 games in 22 days. I'd even go deeper for this game - Wootton, Macheda, Powell, Tunnicliffe, etc.
Ahh... hadn't checked the schedule. I was thinking make sure that those guys (the ones I listed) get some minutes, but given that schedule they'll probably have some by that time. I really do think we need proper rotation this season. Given our strengths, depth in attacking areas and our need to do well in Europe, we cannot afford to drop points or make mistakes because our back ups are not sharp. Last year Welbeck was part of our best XI. Cheech was first striker off the bench. We need them playing at the level they did last year if not better and they wont likely achieve that with no minutes. Tough task for Fergie this season.