Liverpool’s economic world is a real one: The League Cup will never be a priority

Liverpool, Klopp
By Simon Hughes
Oct 28, 2021

Over in the Swiss town of Nyon, there are separate camps of the same movement within UEFA headquarters that would prefer it if all domestic cups across Europe ceased for good.

Such desire stems from the prioritisation of the Champions League, which — it is thought — could become an improved spectacle and therefore generate even more interest if there were fewer games for the biggest clubs to think about in former textile-mill towns such as Preston, Lancashire on squally Wednesday nights.

A different but similarly purposed faction of suits, meanwhile, has recognised there are too many cup fixtures in countries including France and, indeed, England. Get rid of them and the road will be clear for an expanded elite tournament, potentially encouraging the busiest club owners to look away from a Super League for a few more years at least.

Either one of these options would, of course, have a deep effect on clubs such as Preston North End, who are presently 19th in the 24-team Championship, the English pyramid’s second tier.

The Carabao Cup, for example, the No 2 cup competition in England and Wales after the more prestigious and historic FA Cup, accounts for around 60 per cent of the television revenues in the EFL’s television contract. That league’s chairman Rick Parry is aware the competition no longer has the sporting relevance it used to have for lots of the 72 clubs he represents, particularly those attempting to join Preston and company by winning promotion from the third division — League One.

He is open to any move that brings about self-sustainability in the professional levels outside the Premier League. “If we lose that (The Carabao Cup TV revenue),” Parry warned The Athletic in an interview last month when asked about the financial implications, “it’s got to be replaced.”

It is imaginable that senior figures at Liverpool would not mind it if the prospect of midweek trips to places such as Preston’s Deepdale no longer featured on the list of things for manager Jurgen Klopp to consider.

He named a team that was able to win at Preston on Wednesday night but progress to the last eight only came after a tough first half. It involved seven full internationals yet was a completely changed starting XI from Sunday’s filleting of Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Liverpool
Divock Origi scores Liverpool’s second goal against Preston (Photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

For Klopp, the Premier League leads to the Champions League and performances in each of those competitions will always matter more. It becomes tiring writing the same thing to the point where it might even sound like tacit editorial agreement with the strategy, but Liverpool’s economic world is a real one. The Champions League creates the revenues that sustain a competitive investment in the team.

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This season’s Carabao Cup winners will earn £100,000 from the competition. In the Champions League, each group-stage victory alone is worth £2.5 million. A club would have to win the League Cup every year for a quarter of a century to generate the same amount of prize money that arrives via a hum-drum Champions League 1-0 against, say, Midtjylland.

This explains, to a large degree, why Klopp took the risk of starting Diogo Jota against that Danish club in the group finale last December even though Liverpool, in the midst of a busy schedule, had already qualified for the Champions League’s knockout rounds. Last night, the Portugal forward was in the squad at Preston but remained on the bench.

Klopp got to the League Cup final in his first season in charge at Anfield with an inherited squad that initially struggled in the Europa League, where he also went with weakened starting XIs early on, before the chances of silverware got closer.

Liverpool would reach the League Cup’s last four the following year, when they had no European football to think about at all. Since heaving the club back into the Champions League at the end of that campaign, Liverpool have exited the League Cup twice at the point of entry (2017-18 and 2018-19, albeit the latter was against Chelsea) before severely weakened teams somehow made it through two rounds and then one round in successive seasons.

Victory in Preston means Klopp now faces another midweek cup tie, this one in the week before Christmas. It will be the seventh game of nine in December, sandwiched between Premier League fixtures away to Tottenham Hotspur (also among the quarter-finalists) and Leeds United on Boxing Day at Anfield. Two days after facing Leeds, Liverpool go to Leicester City (another club in the last eight).

The quarter-final draw will be made on Saturday and, if Liverpool have to play away, none of their potential opponents will be geographically close (also through are the London quartet of Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea and West Ham United, plus League One’s Sunderland). Klopp, inevitably, will do as he always has done. Indeed, after securing Liverpool’s safe passage last night, he indicated that would be the case.

If Liverpool make it through again, a two-legged semi-final awaits in the first weeks of January, when three first-team players are expected to be on duty with their countries at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). This will have a knock-on effect for Premier League fixtures at Chelsea and at home to Brentford, a team with whom Liverpool could only draw in west London last month.

Unless he signs anyone early in January, Klopp will need to call upon Takumi Minamino and Divock Origi for those challenges. Both scored against Preston but in the relentlessness of deep winter, when Liverpool have no other options, will they be able to deliver? Oh, and did anyone mention at least one but possibly two FA Cup ties to plan for in that January/early February AFCON window as well?

Given these circumstances, the positive elements of featuring in both domestic cup competitions relate to the possibility of extra revenues driven by decent crowds for ties at Anfield if the draws are more favourable from here. There is also the development of youngsters such as 18-year-old Tyler Morton to be excited about. His threaded pass started the move that led to Origi’s unusual clinching goal that made it 2-0 on 84 minutes at Deepdale.

There is a long, straight-backed authority to Morton’s game and his future appears bright — unlike the competition he has impressed in twice already this season.

 (Top photo: Nick Taylor/Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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Simon Hughes

Simon Hughes joined from The Independent in 2019. He is the author of seven books about Liverpool FC as well as There She Goes, a modern social history of Liverpool as a city. He writes about football on Merseyside and beyond for The Athletic.