Wembley way the route to high five

CIAO BELLO — now wipe that pasta sauce from your mouth and down that Perroni, for we have pies, beer ‘n’ silverware to look forward to at Wembley on Sunday. And after a decade of badmouthing the League Cup, to the extent that many of my crew barely recognised it as a first-class tournament anymore, I confess to a feeling of mild anticipation as the Final hoves into view.

On Saturday night, some of us will be having our annual shindig to mark yet another trophyless year for Manchester City — their 33rd ticks up on the 28th. Some of you will feel a boney tremor of age there — yes, it really is a third of a century since Dennis Tueart’s bicycle kick flew into the Newcastle net and into every Red’s craw. It is thus rather pleasing that we shall then be heading straight off to London next morning, still mildly inebriated, with a view to picking up that very trophy once again. And with the chucklesome subtext: “yes, Blues, and we don’t even particularly care for it either.”

There are three reasons for our partial volte-face. Firstly, this could be stage two of a Quintuple; back in 1994, we were actually gutted to lose this final because it robbed us of stage one of a potential Treble. How absurd it’d be to lose this, the easiest of the five, whilst clinching the other four.