League Cup 4th Round Draw

Won't be easy. Let's see how we do against Southampton and then Leicester in the league first.

Hughes should make changes but hopefully Silva will keep the side reasonably settled.

This will be my first game for almost 4 years, if anyone fancies a pint, I'll be in the Royal Oak.

It is just, however a chance for the benchwarmers to get a run-out but generally there is little to be gauged from most performances. Everton will probably rest Richarlison after the rough treatment he got against Fulham.

Today, I would stick Tosun up front, play Bernard and Lookman for Richarlison and Walcott, and play Dowell for Sigurdsson. The defence needs to stay as is.

The club, its supporters, needs silverware. I'll take the brickbats and insults of it being a 'Micky Mouse' cup (including from our own supporters, it would appear...) to see Everton parading the streets of Liverpool with a trophy again.

"It has to be stressed", for us, it isn't a Mickey Mouse cup, and it should be taken seriously.

"The managers of the Premier League clubs certainly don't take it seriously given the weakened team selections especially in these early rounds."

But not for them.

On a side note, what a shame extra time has been stopped in the competition. No logic to that at all.

I've watched us win trophies since 1963, nothing beats it — and that includes "Mickey Mouse" ones!

I don't care if it's the Simod Cup or the Zenith Data Cup, if it's a trophy all the Premier League clubs compete for, then let's win it.

Saints at home, then Leicester away, it sounds good to me.

[Hope I have not made a tit of myself, but I do like to keep abreast of such things.]

I have checked, and can't for the life of me see any mention of it anywhere on the scheduled televised match lists (apart from Bein Turkey).

I agree with Brent and many others who perceive this Cup (which we have never won under any of its many aliases) should be taken seriously. The fixtures have seen some of the 'big guns' shot down already.

If we do manage to win it, will we all be entitled to wear Mickey Mouse watches?

The fact that you have mish-mash formations makes it Mickey Mouse!

If you do qualify for a ticket, please let me know as I know plenty of people who will willingly take it off your hands.

I'd love us to win this cup, especially for those who haven't seen us lift a trophy.

Wenger himself lovingly embraced this trophy in his latter years, as did Fergie before him, not to mention Mourinho and Pelligrini. So bar a few-year period about 15 years ago, it really isn't a Mickey Mouse cup. If teams without European fixture congestion decide to throw it, then it is because their managers are idiots.

Spurs x 1
Liverpool x 2.
Chelsea x 3.
Man City x 3.
Man Utd x 4.

So that's 13 wins for five of the so called big six in the past 18 years, whilst Arsenal have lost in three finals.

Tom, if we can manage to win this cup this season, who knows what it could lead to?

I bet there would be. And I'll have a huge beaming smile on my face at our 'embarrassment' if and when it happens.

Tom @ 27, continue calling the League Cup (and FA Cup, for that matter) a 'Mickey Mouse' cup all you like, based on the single justification you offer that many Premier League teams send out their 2nd string in these knock-out competitions.

That is indisputably true. You could certainly present a case that the FA and the League have devalued their own flagship knock-out competitions which were once held in huge prestige (certainly the FA Cup) by the drip-drip of competition changes down the years:

● Stopping immediate mid-week replay games for the FA Cup when the police insisted on being given more time to plan for such events;

● Stopping endless replays (Everton v Sheffield Wednesday, anyone..?) by introducing extra time and penalty shootouts after one replay.

● Stopping cup final replays and introducing extra time and penalties in a one-game final only.

● Extending that 'no replay' rule to the semi-finals and now to the quarter-finals (just last season);

● Stipulating that all semi-finals should be played at Wembley, rather than around the country as is the past (got to pay for the reconstructed Wembley somehow, eh?);

● Exempting teams who qualified from Europe from two early rounds.

So blame the FA and the Football League for 'devaluing' their own cup competitions and not insisting on 'full-strength teams', as was previously the case.

But before glibly applying the 'Micky Mouse' moniker to both competitions, take a good look at the list of winners since football was invented with the innovation of the Premier League. It is dominated by the 'elite' clubs you claim don't take the competition seriously.

Each season by default Everton theoretically can win one of three trophies (four, in those all too rare seasons we qualify for Europe).

The League and FA Cups present (currently) our best chances of opening the rusted lock of our trophy cabinet again.

Give me a day out at Wembley and an open-top bus parade around the city over a 5th to 15th league place finish any and every day of the week, ta very much.

And they call us bitter!

Have we won any trophies in recent seasons?

Do they have the 8th Place Cup?

No and no.

Everton Football Club haven't had our hands on silverware since 1995 that's starting to majorly piss me off.

We probably won't get near lifting the FA Cup and we ain't gonna win the league so this League Cup should be our ambition to lift the mood.

I was brought up watching football when success meant seeing players lift trophies and have medals around their neck, not be lauded for finishing 4th, 5th or 6th best so long as it fills the coffers for the fat cats in charge.

I was in the Stretford End that night... in fact, all three games, the quarter-final at Man Utd, and the semi-final at Bolton. Heartbreaking as a kid. Even worse a month later, thanks to Clive Thomas. I'm still mentally scarred even now by our beloved toffs.

Both these cup games are winnable. Depends on proper attitude and team selection really.

I agree. Every now and then I remember Rideout's header lofted over Schmeichel in 1995, or Pat van den Hauwe of all people nailing the title at Norwich.

I don't often reflect on us creeping over the line to finish 4th in 2005 (I actually had to Google to check if it was 04 or 05) any more than I do finishing 4th in 1988 – that one I didn't have to Google because I remember it irking me so much that we ONLY finished 4th.

Now, 4th might mean more money than a cup but I have never flicked through the Rothman's Football Yearbook to check bank balances, just silverware.

Exactly!

Top 6 finishes only mean anything to the men in charge of football clubs where the big money is at.

The long-suffering fans would much rather see the team win a trophy and look back fondly at a year we won something.

As for the Champions League, well, the reality is it's not just a one-off season in the Champions League that this club needs, it would have to be a regular thing and become the norm and that's unlikely to happen.

So forgive me if I want to celebrate lifting an actual trophy over finishing in the top 6.

If we must get in the Europa League then I'd much rather it be through winning the Cup than finishing 6th or 7th, been there done that under Moyes, do we look back and think any better of him for it?

One of the breast comments I've read on TW!

Getting that proverbial coat as you say...,.