The Cinderella clubs...

Man City, Fulham and ‘Boro fans will no doubt be fuming after their sides were knocked out of the Carling Cup on Wednesday night by lower division clubs.

City fans won’t need reminding that it’s now 30 years since they last won a trophy. For blues fans, getting knocked out of any cup competition isn’t exactly big news – they just say ‘typical city’, and so it goes. The chances of City winning the FA Cup, or come to that anyone out of the ‘big four’ winning it must be nearly as remote as winning the National Lottery.

Added to which Chelsea’s domination in the league has resulted in the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal putting more emphasis on winning what many fans still refer to as the ‘Worthless Cup’, aka, the Carling Cup formerly the Worthington Cup, though in fairness to Liverpool, they’ve always taken the competition seriously.

It’s quite depressing if you think about it, at least prior to Chelsea’s domination the rest had a bit of a chance of winning the ‘Worthless’!

I’m not suggesting that there’s nothing left to play for this season for last night’s losers and the rest of the Premiership’s Cinderella clubs. The reality of modern football means that the Cinderella clubs prioritise on maintaining their league status and then with luck hope to secure entry into Europe via the UEFA cup.

IT hasn’t always been like this, there was a time come the beginning of a new season that you really didn’t know who’d win the league and cups. Yes, I can remember those days, and to be honest, despite the many improvements of today like pitches and new stadiums, in purely sporting terms, it was better then.

Harking back, here’s a cup question for older fans:

Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham could do it. Man City and Everton could do it. Arsenal are desperate to do it… Man Utd might rather not do it. Celtic and Liverpool can't do it, but Rangers can. There’s one other British team that can do this…
What is it, and who is the other team?