“It is a draw with a little twist tonight.”
Sky Sports’ Julian Warren was very excited by the new system that was at play for the Carabao Cup second round draw on Thursday night.
“Bowl 1, in front of John, contains the seeded teams,” Warren explained. “Bowl 2, here, contains an equal amount of red balls and white balls… A red ball denotes a home tie and a white ball denotes an away tie. And Bowl 3, in front of Alex, contains the unseeded teams.”
Straightforward, right?
Very, very wrong.
Former Crystal Palace, Reading and Coventry midfielder John Salako made the draw seem like the most complicated ordeal one could imagine as he immediately lost all grasp of the format.
Salako’s job was not all that difficult. He simply had to pull a seeded team from the bowl in front of him and then reveal whether they would be playing at home or away against the unseeded team that Alex McLeish drew…
Red meant home and white meant away. Red meant home and white meant away. Red = Home. White = Away.
It was clear from the outset that Salako was confused as he assigned Brentford a white ball and confidently announced that they would be playing at home.
Warren then did Salako absolutely no favours when he misled him about the location of Crystal Palace’s tie with Ipswich.
Things continued in this tits-up fashion until Solako second-guessed himself after claiming that Charlton would be at home to Norwich.
https://twitter.com/patto1878/status/895753583416815617
A message from the producers finally arrived and Salako was reminded that the red balls, which had H written on them, meant home.
Anyone know which school John Salako went to?😂😂😂@WACCOE pic.twitter.com/h4dZDigDGV
— Football Back Then ⚽️🏐⚽️ (@FootballThen) August 10, 2017
After finally latching on to the rules, the rest of the draw went pretty seamlessly, but we reckon McLeish will be on Home/Away duty next time around.
Still, all cup draws will pale in comparison to the glorious effort put forth by Rod Stewart back in January.
Note also the look of fear and bewilderment on Alan Stubbs' face https://t.co/l0YMzC7Rve
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 22, 2017
