Carabao Cup third round: Liverpool vs Tottenham is the tie
The third round of the Carabao Cup is played across two weeks in September, and it is the round where the competition stops being an EFL knockout and becomes a national one.
It is also the round the nine Premier League clubs in European competition enter, which is why the draw has produced the ties it has.
Liverpool against Tottenham
The pick of them, on 15 September. Liverpool have two points from two league matches and have been pegged back twice. Tottenham are bottom of the Premier League without a goal.
Both managers will be tempted to rest players. Both are in a position where a cup run would change the temperature around the club, which is exactly the calculation that makes the September rounds unpredictable.
The other big ones
Manchester United host Brighton on 16 September, a week after United put five past Ipswich and Brighton lost 4-3 at Chelsea. Chelsea play Leeds on 9 September. Ipswich host Arsenal on 15 September, a rematch of nothing but a fixture with an edge after Ipswich conceded five at Old Trafford.
Manchester City go to Norwich on 17 September, Everton host Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Coventry host Aston Villa — a meeting of two sides who between them have taken no points and scored no goals in the league.
The two weeks it is spread across
The round is not played on a single midweek. Six ties go on 8 and 9 September, and the remaining ten on 15, 16 and 17 September, which is a scheduling consequence of the Champions League league phase beginning in between.
That gives the round an odd rhythm. Millwall against Newcastle and Chelsea against Leeds are settled before most of the competition has kicked off, and Manchester City do not play their tie until nine days after the first ball of the round.
The lower-division ties
Millwall host Newcastle United on 8 September, which is the fixture the format exists to produce. Bournemouth host Lincoln City, Crystal Palace host Middlesbrough and Sunderland host Hull City on the same evening.
Leyton Orient play Bradford City, Peterborough host Barnsley, West Ham host Fulham, Reading host Brentford and Fleetwood Town host Sheffield United.
Why the third round is when it gets serious
All ninety-two clubs of the Premier League and the EFL enter this competition, and they do not all come in together. Eleven Premier League clubs — the ones without European football — entered in the second round. The nine with continental commitments enter now, which is why this draw suddenly contains Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, both Manchester clubs and Tottenham.
The staggering exists to protect the calendar, and it has a side effect worth noticing: the third round is the first time the entire competition is in the same draw, and therefore the first chance a League One club has of pulling out a Premier League name.
The rotation question
September is the month managers use this competition to look at players who have not started. It is also the month in which a careless afternoon costs them a trophy they will want by March.
The clubs facing that calculation most sharply are the ones already under pressure. Tottenham are bottom of the Premier League without a goal and go to Anfield. Aston Villa are nineteenth without a goal and travel to Coventry, who are eighteenth. Neither manager can treat the tie as a free hit, and neither can spare the minutes either.
What the winner gets
Not much in cash. The EFL does not publish a prize table the way UEFA does, and the figures that circulate are small enough to be irrelevant to a Premier League budget.
What the winner does get is a place in the play-off round of the 2027-28 UEFA Conference League, and that is the entire point. For a club outside the top six it is the shortest route into European football that exists in England: six or seven ties, most of them at home, and a Wembley final on 21 March 2027.
Which is why, for all the talk of rotation, the sides that go out in September usually regret it by the spring.
The final is at Wembley on Saturday 21 March 2027. Between this round and that afternoon there are a fourth round, quarter-finals and two-legged semi-finals — four more ties for whoever comes through September, which by the standards of a season is barely anything at all.
That is the case for taking it seriously in the autumn. A league campaign is thirty-eight matches and a European one is at least eight. This is a trophy that can be won in seven, and three of them are already gone by the time the big clubs arrive. For a squad outside the top six that is the most efficient trophy in English football, and the reason a Tuesday night in September is worth more than the team sheet usually suggests.