Turning 60: Everton's Difficult Relationship with the League Cup

If my arithmetic is correct, we have embarked on our 60th attempt to win the League Cup. SIXTIETH! 

We are the biggest club to have never won it. 24 clubs have lifted the League Cup but far too many times, we have not treated it with sufficient respect . 

When it started in the 1960s we took a condescending attitude and declined to take part on six occasions. 

We did compete in its very first season, 1960-61, but did not enter again until 1967, a few months after the final was held at Wembley for the first time. 

After three seasons, in which Harry Catterick's team progressed no further than the fourth round, we pulled out of the 1970-71 competition.

I could see the logic of  this. In the summer of 1970 Everton had represented England in the World Cup in Mexico and our players were jaded, with a European Cup campaign ahead of us. 

We were back in the League Cup the following season when for the first time the winners were given a place in Europe, with Stoke entering the UEFA Cup in 1972. 

If you had said then that we would enter the competition every year up until 2026 and not win it, the vast majority of Evertonians would have ridiculed you.

It was 50 seasons ago, 1976-77, that we got through to the final for the first time. Alas, it was a dismal affair, probably the most boring Wembley final of the decade. Two replays followed, with Aston Villa ultimately triumphing. 

After Liverpool won the competition in 1981 and then 1982, we started deriding the competition as the Mickey Mouse Cup, even more so after they won it again in 1983.

But in 1984, we made the final and were keen to lift the trophy. A derby match at Wembley, it was another goalless draw... thanks to the intervention of a Mickey Mouse-sized hand on the goalline by a future Match Of The Day pundit to stop an Adrian Heath shot. This handball could be seen from Disneyland, but not by the referee. We lost the replay 1-0.

In three other seasons, we reached the semi-finals but lost two-legged affairs ... to Arsenal, in 1987-88, Chelsea, in 2007-08, and Manchester City, in 2015-16. 

So, if I am not mistaken, that means we have got past the quarter-finals on only five out of 59 attempts. For a club of our stature, that is awful.

What's more, we seem to be getting worse. If I'm not mistaken — for it seems hard to believe — the last 10 seasons we have had five penalty shoot-outs in this competition and lost all of them. Four (Southampton twice, Leicester and Fulham) of those shootouts were at Goodison. 

Overall, six of our last 10 League Cup exits have been at home. Off we would  trudge out of Goodison, cursing and swearing in the night air.

This century, my over-riding memory is of us fielding weakened teams. To be fair, I haven't checked. But too many times, I have heard an Everton manager say after an exit that he had selected a team good enough to have won that game.

My response has been to shout out: Is Everton a club that still wants to win trophies? Sometimes I feel that it hasn't, that the club has been content to idle along in the league.

We have now reached the point where none of our players can remember Everton winning a trophy. Only a few were alive in 1995 and they were in nappies.

But that gives them the opportunity to end a famine. Doing so would unleash an explosion of joy among long-suffering Evertonians that would shock and startle them. These players can be heroes, the Class of '27, who by winning a trophy can reignite this club.

So, let's go for it. Please, David, play our strongest XI of injury-free players on Wednesday against Wolves. A good cup run can re-energise a club and its supporters. And right now, I think we need that.

Tell me ma, me ma, I don't want no tea, no tea...