IAN LADYMAN: Winning is a habit, so why do clubs write off the cup so willing?

The best thing about going for a run is that you can’t lose. You always feel better at the end than you did at the start. It’s one of the few things it has going for it.

Football is not like that, though. It is results-driven. No matter what they tell us, winning and losing is what it’s about. And when you come out on the wrong side, it makes you want to hide under the bed.

Which makes me wonder why, in weeks like this, some managers seem to sacrifice their teams’ chances so willingly.

Rob Edwards won’t admit this, of course. The Luton manager said after his team lost at Exeter City of League One in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday that he had wanted to ‘go deep’ in the competition.

But he made 10 changes for the game. He played his second string and they lost. Go deep? Really?

Not that this is the point. Not this time. No, the point today is about winning and what it does and how it makes you feel ahead of the next game which, for Luton, is against Everton at Goodison Park tomorrow.

Everton have also struggled this season in the Premier League and haven’t picked up a point or scored a goal at home. So this game could well be close.

But Everton, having won in the league at Brentford last Saturday evening, have subsequently won at Aston Villa in the cup. There is a video of their supporters celebrating in the away section at Villa Park. They are, frankly, going wild.

So those fans will take that feeling and that sense of recovery and momentum into tomorrow’s game. So will Everton’s players and in particular forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who has now scored two in two.

He will feel as though he is on a roll and so will his team. It’s only two games but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to transform a mood and lift a season.

I don’t know about you but I fancy Everton tomorrow. They will be feeling good whereas Luton — one goal in open Premier League play all season — will feel flat. And Edwards, in part, will be to blame.

There is mitigation, for sure. Edwards will have a team of sports scientists at Kenilworth Road who would have been telling him his first-team players needed a rest, that some of them are in danger of entering the ‘red zone’ where overload threatens to turn in to injuries. Edwards has a small squad and cannot afford that.

He will also have his own years in the game telling him players need rest and need to be kept fresh, and that any game against a lower-league team looking to make a point and leave its mark comes with a risk of injury attached. He is a bright bloke, Edwards, and has earned the right to live or die by his own decision. But even so, 10 changes? That seems excessive.

Everton manager Sean Dyche made five of his own for the game at Villa. But Dyche has a deeper squad and in key positions — like in goal and across the back four — Everton were just about unchanged.

This is a conversation we have every year. So many clubs do it. They are prepared to write off the Carabao Cup and indeed the FA Cup in exchange for improved prospects in their respective league. Whether there is statistical evidence that it works is another point entirely.

Anecdotedly, I have heard managers testify to the opposite.

When Nigel Clough’s Sheffield United were progressing to the semi-final of the FA Cup in 2014, his team managed to climb from the League One relegation places up to 11th.

Clough stated that the feeling of winning in cup games rubbed off on his players in the league. Equally, Sir Alex Ferguson wrote in his first book that the sheer weight of games at the end of their 1999 Treble season actually helped Manchester United over the line. His players simply forgot how to lose, he said.

There will be examples to the contrary, of course. Certainly I wonder whether qualification for the Europa League — as deserved as it is — will help Brighton in the Premier League this season. Going from Thursday to Sunday so many times is never easy.

But Luton’s need is more real and it’s here and now. If they don’t start winning in the Premier League soon it will be too late. They will be cut adrift. So they need victories — they need a lift — and they need it soon.

Burnley are down with the dead men, too. They beat Salford 4-0 away on Tuesday having made 11 changes. So Vincent Kompany is on the same page as Edwards. So are many others.

But the detail is that Edwards is the one who has been caught out and who knows what the ramifications may be tomorrow afternoon and beyond.

Dropping Ramsdale took great strength

Aaron Ramsdale’s selection for Arsenal’s Carabao Cup game against Brentford confirmed his new and diminished status as the club’s number two goalkeeper. David Raya will continue in the Premier League.

I have seen it discussed elsewhere that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta may alternate Ramsdale and Raya the way that England manager Ron Greenwood did with Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence in the 1980s.

But there is an important distinction here. Greenwood made his decision out of weakness. He couldn’t decide between two world class goalkeepers so he fudged it, confusing England’s defence and jeopardising his team’s chances of success along the way.

Arteta, on the other hand, has made his decision to demote last season’s number one and that has taken great strength. What he has not been strong enough to do just yet is admit it.

Ketchup's back on the table

During his time at Tottenham, Antonio Conte banned tomato ketchup from the training ground and it was hailed as a masterstroke as his team won some early games. Too much sugar, you see.

Under Ange Postecoglou, we hear it's back on the table in the players' canteen. This version of Tottenham are also winning games.

So what this tells us is that some of the fine margins our modern coaches talk about don't really matter at all. What really matters is the coaching and the football.

Tottenham are on the march and on the sauce. Look back through time and you will find we have been here before.

Manchester City can be got at

Pep Guardiola thinks Newcastle kicked Manchester City out of the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night but a snippet of the play told a truer story.

Chased across the pitch and then subjected to a thumping but fair tackle by Anthony Gordon, City midfielder Mateo Kovacic climbed back to his feet with a smile on his face.

Kovacic - hardly a dancefloor wallflower - knew what everybody else knew, namely that City were in a game.

If more clubs approached City matches with the attitude Newcastle showed, they may not stroll to the Premier League title quite so comfortably this year.

Murphy's kindness was rare

When I was a young reporter on the Nottingham Evening Post, I was tasked with developing a relationship with Notts County manager Colin Murphy.

Murphy was one of football's most idiosyncratic characters. He used to write his own programme notes - which didn't always make sense - and gave me the run around in my early days in this profession.

But Murphy was a deep and innovative thinker about football and left his indelible mark across our landscape at clubs like Lincoln, Derby, Hull, Stockport and Southend.

After he left Notts County, he wrote to me and wished me well in my career. Such kindness is rare and I still have the note. Murphy died at the age of 79 earlier this month. His was a life in football well lived.