A mantra

Repeat after me:

I do not care about the Carling Cup...
I do not care about the Carling Cup...
I do not care about the Carling Cup...
I do not care about the Carling Cup...

Oh, screw it.

I don't care about the Carling Cup, exactly, but I do care when Man United is getting knocked out of it by a Championship team -- and playing like crap in the process. Sure, it was only the United B-team, but there were still enough recognizable names in the lineup; those players should have been able to win the game, if they'd taken their heads out of their asses for 90 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, in the other corner, Fernando Torres & co. beat Reading 4-2, leading one to wonder, yet again, why he was on the bench last weekend. (I suppose it might have had something to do with him being so anonymous in the Champions League game in midweek. But we'll ignore that for the moment.) Anyway, the best thing about the match, apart of course from Torres' hat trick, was the post-game interview with him and Jamie Carragher, and the number of different confused faces that Torres put on while trying to decipher what the hell Carra was saying about him.

Yes, I'm easily amused sometimes.

Next game: Guessing what effect the midweek results will have on the team's lineups for tomorrow. For United, I'd say that Sir Alex is going to go back to his usual XI and start plotting how best to exile the youngsters as punishment. For Liverpool, I'll go waaaaaay out on a limb and say: rotation. You heard it here first.