Chelsea set for potential Spurs showdown in League Cup fourth round

The Carabao Cup just simply cannot wait for the actual rounds to complete before conducting their draws these days.

I mean it’s 2020, so might as well get wild.

So here we go with the fourth round matchups even though the third round hasn’t been played yet and the second round literally just finished. (I supposed maybe it has to do something with the extremely congested scheduling of this competition, to allow teams some contingent planning, however useful that may or may not be?)

In any case, should Chelsea beat Barnsley next week, in the third round, the following week we would make the arduous cross-town track to either North London or East London, to take one the winner of Leyton Orient vs. Tottenham Hotspur.

Orient are in League Two these days, so it’s probably fair to assume that we will have to face Spurs, though José Mourinho’s charges barely got past Bulgaria’s fifth finest side, Lokomotiv Plovdiv last night in the Europa League, thanks to two late-late goals. To make matters worse for Spurs, their schedule would look absolutely manic should they advance in the League Cup as well: they’re facing the prospect of 7 games in 14 days and that’s not a typo.

Plenty of rotation will be expected, to say the least.

But of course we first have to get past Barnsley to even make it to the fourth round, for which the full draw is as follows:

Lincoln City OR Liverpool vs. Leicester City OR Arsenal
Millwall OR Burnley vs. Manchester City OR Bournemouth
West Brom OR Brentford vs. Fulham OR Sheffield Wednesday
Fleetwood Town OR Everton vs. West Ham OR Hull City
Bristol City OR Aston Villa vs. Stoke City OR Gillingham
Leyton Orient OR Tottenham vs. CHELSEA OR Barnsley
Newport County OR Watford vs. Morecambe OR Newcastle
Preston North End OR Brighton vs. Luton Town OR Manchester United