With the 2026-27 season still in its early stages, Liverpool and Chelsea will already be looking at the Carabao Cup as a realistic route to silverware. The competition has taken on added importance after Arsenal’s surprise defeat to League Two side Fleetwood Town on Tuesday removed one major rival from the picture.

That result has sharpened the focus on Wednesday’s fourth-round tie at Anfield, where Liverpool and Chelsea will meet knowing one of them is guaranteed to leave the competition. With the rest of the round not yet completed, the winner will move a step closer to a trophy that now looks more open than it did at the start of the campaign.

The wider history of the competition underlines that point. Aside from Newcastle United’s triumph in 2025, the Carabao Cup has been won by one of England’s “Big Six” every year since 2013. Since Leicester City’s success in 2000, only five other winners have come from outside Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

This season, however, several of those familiar contenders have already fallen away. Man Utd and Tottenham exited in the third round, while Arsenal are now out as well. Another heavyweight will go on Wednesday when Liverpool host Chelsea, and the quarterfinals will then feature no more than two of the Big Six.

Manchester City remain involved too, and their own fourth-round meeting with third-placed Brighton & Hove Albion will remove another leading threat. Even so, the shape of the draw has left both Liverpool and Chelsea with a genuine opportunity.

Of Liverpool’s four possible trophies this season, the Carabao Cup is the least glamorous alongside the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup. Yet the chance to win it is real, and Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola appears to understand that his best opportunity for silverware in his first season at Anfield may have already arrived.

Chelsea’s dependence on João Pedro has become impossible to miss. Across his first year at the club, he scored 23 goals in all competitions and added enough assists to bring his total goal contributions to 32. In 2026/27, he has already been involved in eight goals and assists in seven matches, underlining how central he has become to the team’s attack.

His absence matters beyond the numbers. Chelsea do have other scorers, with Cole Palmer the next most productive player since the start of last season on 15 goals in all competitions. But Pedro offers more than finishing. He helps connect the side, and when he is not there, the team’s balance changes.

That has already been felt when others have been asked to lead the line. Morgan Rogers found it difficult to operate as a No. 9 against Tottenham, away from his preferred role as an inside forward on the left. Danny Welbeck was signed to provide occasional cover, mainly in domestic cup matches, rather than to start regularly. Emmanuel Emegha has still not featured because of injury, while Nicolas Jackson is in strong form, but for Aston Villa.

As a result, Chelsea’s attack loses a major piece when Pedro is unavailable. Alonso was clear about the importance of the issue ahead of the Carabao Cup meeting with Liverpool.

“He is a key player. We will miss him,” Alonso told reporters on Tuesday, building up to the Carabao Cup tie against Liverpool. “But we will have to be ready to deal with the injury and to be competitive and to try to win games with the players that we have available.”

Alonso described the problem as “an injury in his thigh”. Pedro has had similar muscle setbacks before, missing two games with a thigh issue in April last season, spending almost two months out with a hamstring injury in the second half of the 2023–24 campaign, and sitting out around three weeks with a calf problem at Watford in 2022–23.

For now, this is viewed as a setback rather than a long-term alarm, although it is not a trivial one. Alonso said Pedro is expected to be sidelined for “a few weeks”, adding: “Let’s see how many [weeks] … We don’t want to predict that. But he will not be ready for the next games.”

Michael Carrick’s start has become harder to defend after Manchester United’s latest setback at Old Trafford, with the manager now matching a sequence the club had not seen since the early part of the century.

United have never gone nine matches without a win since 2000, but Carrick has now equalled the eight-game stretch previously recorded by Louis van Gaal between November and December 2015. That run remains a familiar reference point, not least because Van Gaal kept his job despite it.

The Dutchman’s sequence ended with a 0-0 draw against Chelsea, a result that appeared to buy him more time. He then opened 2016 with a 2-1 victory over Swansea City, a result that helped him see out the season. Whether Carrick receives the same patience is now the central question.

United’s next fixture is another meeting with Chelsea, and it arrives at a moment when the club need something to shift quickly. The Blues’ performance against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday was described as awful, which at least leaves open the possibility of a much-needed response from Carrick’s side.

The wider picture is bleak. As the analysis notes, there is effectively little United can do to change matters other than dismiss the manager. Results are demanded immediately, yet the feeling around the club is that Carrick has too few allies in senior positions if performances continue at this level.

The problems extend beyond the dugout. The board are under scrutiny, but any real reset would take time. The ownership need to settle on a direction, the recruitment team need to prioritise properly and the squad needs to be cleared of a toxic culture that is dragging everything down. Those are not fixes that happen overnight.

Pressure is also building around Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox, but replacing two of the club’s most powerful figures would be another long and complicated process. United do not have the luxury of waiting, with Chelsea, Roma, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Sporting CP and Brentford all next on the schedule. On current form, the winless run could easily grow even longer.