FOOTBALL cup competitions are rubbish.

Let’s get that fact out of the way from the off.

If you want to watch football that matters then the word ‘league’ must be included – except where it is preceded by ‘Europa’ of course.

It is nothing new for football clubs to treat cup ties the way a small child might regard making a rare visit to an elderly grandparent they're not close to.

They don’t want to do it but they have to.

This midweek’s League Cup – or to give it its latest title, the Carabao Cup – and Checkatrade Trophy games were a waste of everyone’s time and effort.

Fans don’t want to be there and clubs don’t want to play them. So why do we have them?

Jose Mourinho was right this week when he suggested we might be better off just getting rid of the League Cup.

The Manchester United manager went down the traditional football lines of playing pretty much a second string side against Burton Albion, and Manchester City made eight changes.

Spurs had a pathetically small crowd of less than 24,000 inside Wembley for their game against Barnsley, and the all-Premier League tie between Crystal Palace and Huddersfield was watched by less than 7,000.

But such are the depths to which cup competitions’ stock has plummeted, even smaller clubs are fielding weak sides for knockout games.

Bury – in the ridiculously small-time Checkatrade Trophy – and, in the Carabao Cup, Bolton were two of many sides below the Premier League to make a ton of changes to their teams.

Doncaster’s manager Darren Ferguson summed up the irrelevance of cups when he said before their trip to Arsenal he just wanted to get it out of the way so he could concentrate on the league.

A small club going to the likes of Arsenal in the cup used to be the stuff of dreams. Remember the ‘White Hot’ years for Wanderers? Those wins at Liverpool and Arsenal are indelibly etched into the history of Bolton Wanderers and remembered as some of the greatest moments watching the Whites for fans who were there.

And there we have it. The league now doesn’t only rule in Premier League circles but everywhere.

So what to do about it? Well, firstly football should accept and admit that no one is seriously interested in cups anymore and then look at the reasons.

The main one is there is no desired gain from doing well in the cups.

If they provided great riches from progressing through the rounds and TV rights, like the Premier and Champions League, there would be an incentive – similarly, if there was a promotion place or qualification for the Champions League at stake.

Unfortunately, there is no reason for clubs at any level to do well in cups so no one can criticise them for treating knockout competitions as unwanted distractions.