EVERY season the Carabao Cup second round serves as a reminder to Dream Team managers that there’s so much more to this game than just the Premier League.
All five Premier League teams won their respective cup fixtures on Tuesday night, scoring 17 unanswered goals between them.
A further eight top flight sides will be in action tonight and many gaffers will be hoping for bumper returns of a similar volume.
Crystal Palace beat Norwich 4-0 to secure their spot in the next round with Jean-Philippe Mateta (£3.2m), Eberechi Eze (£4.5m) and Daichi Kamada (£1.8m) cashing in with double-digit hauls.
The former scored a hat-trick at the same stage last season and while he wasn’t quite able to replicate that feat, a brace and an assist earned him 20 points when all was said and done.
Eze took the Canaries for 15 points via a goal and assist to take his tally for the season to 25, a total only bettered by Mohamed Salah (£7.2m), Noni Madueke (£3m) and Erling Haaland (£8.5m).
That’s how quickly things can change at this embryonic stage of the campaign.
Dream Team bosses who own the Eagles’ No10 may have been frustrated prior to Tuesday night’s game as the England international had looked lively for minimal reward.
Eze had a direct free-kick goal cruelly disallowed in Gameweek 1 by a premature referee’s whistle and he rattled the crossbar with a similarly ferocious effort against West Ham at the weekend.
Suddenly, easy pickings in the Carabao Cup have evened things out and the 26-year-old is now second among Dream Team midfielders overall.
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Elsewhere, Brighton fielded a second-string XI against Crawley and registered a comfortable 4-0 win with Adam Webster (£2.3m) emerging as the primary beneficiary with a 16-point return.
The likes of Jordan Pickford (£3.2m), Vitaliy Mykolenko (£2.7m) and Tim Iroegbunam (£1.8m) boosted their points as Everton beat Doncaster 3-0 at Goodison Park.
In fact, the latter is now level with Cole Palmer (£6m) on 24 points – Iroegbunam has racked up 21 tackles already in 2024/25!
Leicester’s new signing Jordan Ayew (£2.2m) and Fulham’s new recruit Joachim Andersen (£2.7m) posted impressive double-digit scores in their respective Carabao Cup victories too.
With Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, West Ham, Bournemouth, Southampton, Brentford, Ipswich and Wolves in action tonight, many Dream Team bosses will be expecting similar results from the likes of Alexander Isak (£5m), Anthony Gordon (£4.4m), Mohammed Kudus (£5m) and Morgan Gibbs-White (£3.3m).
That being said, the risk of rotation is high in the early rounds of the cups – Eze owners can count themselves rather fortunate he was given the full 90 minutes against Norwich.
This Gameweek should remind gaffers of the value attached to the additional competitions.
The Premier League is the bread and butter of Dream Team but the domestic cups and the European competitions are the delicious sundries.
Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Aston Villa are set to commence their Champions League campaigns after the international break in Gameweek 4 while Tottenham and Manchester United will get underway in the Europa League a week later.
If Chelsea get past Servette in the second leg of their Conference League play-off (they lead 2-0 on aggregate) they will start earning points in the league stage in Gameweek 6.
The revamped formats of the European competitions mean it’s more important than ever that Dream Team managers target the midweek fixtures once they start coming thick and fast.
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