Years ago I was out with some friends celebrating a birthday. I sat opposite a woman who eulogised about ‘having her colours done’. I don’t know if this is still a thing, but the broad premise was that a ‘consultant’ selected a set of colours suited to your complexion and, um, aura.

The woman turned to someone who was feigning interest and suggested her colour might be ‘brick’. Sensing some mild offence, she decided the only option was to dig a deeper hole for herself, saying ‘Well, you’re quite earthy, aren’t you?’

Sky Sports seem to have had the League Cup’s colours done and decided to dress it entirely in beige with maybe a splash of taupe. In a world where sports are being vajazzled all over the place, the League Cup is being systematically whipped into a lifeless paste.

In recent years we’ve had every imaginable type of League Cup tie; two seasons ago we had Crystal Palace, a middling Premier League side, we’ve had Manchester City, the best side in the country and we’ve had peers and we’ve had sides smaller than us and none of them have stirred any emotion. Playing the same team we played ten days ago in the exact same stadium was unlikely to stir the loins.

Last night there were six ties in which a smaller team beat their bigger rival, yet the BBC’s lead story was an injury to one of Brighton’s new signings. Their top three stories were about Premier League sides beating lower league sides at home with an aggregate score across the games of 11-0. By its very definition, predictable things are not news.

None-the-less, this satisfies the broader narrative, Premier League sides are supposed to be dismissive about small clubs in the same way Oasis diehards would never claim to like Taylor Swift. Weakened teams are fielded, ties become little more than friendlies, winning is a punishment unless it’s done with dissmisive indifference. 

Under its new deal, Sky’s latest offer to us is near-omnipresent football. In the past football was a distraction, 3pm kick-offs on a Saturday became a tradition because it was the optimum time to kick-off after factories closed at lunchtime. You went to football to unwind from the drudgery of work.

Now we have football as wallpaper, it just happens everywhere all the time. It is unremarkable, predictable and entirely beige in complexion. Sky promise you can watch every single game in the League Cup. Except, of course, you can’t, you can watch one game, but you get to choose which it is.

As a result, quality is compromised, our game had no pre-match build-up and a heroically disinterested commentator. We can’t be that far away from Artificial Intelligence replacing this kind of coverage. If computer games can generate a passable commentary on a Playstation, there’s no reason why a game this bland can’t be accompanied by AI Lee Dixon saying ‘we’ve got a great match in store, Martin’.

Our commentator offered an extraordinarily long explanation of Coventry’s semi-final defeat to West Ham in 1981 before briefly acknowledging our win in 1986. Stray passes were repeatedly described as being aimed at ‘no one in particular’. Late on when Mark Harris lined up for a shot he said “Harris looking to do what he did on Saturday… well, probably not, he’s not going to be able to do that again is he?” For Coventry’s deflected goal, he suggested that Peter Kioso ‘offered his back’ to the striker like he was euphemistically describing the mating ritual of a moorhen.

Oxford aren’t innocent, in two games against Coventry this season, we’ve had 19 different starters and Cameron Brannagan only played last night because he missed out on Saturday. If the club and media aren’t going to care, it’s hard to imagine why the watching public will. In fact, we buy into it because football must be very earnest and serious and we need to understand the practicalities of resting players.

It may not be a great loss to abolish the League Cup except over time it would diminish our achievements in the competition. Something has to happen, maybe we could make it more regionalised so there’s a greater chance of being drawn against a local rival, perhaps the draw should be seeded so we’re more likely to play a Premier League team at home. Maybe there could be a universal ticket price guarantee meaning more kids and families could go to earlier rounds for an affordable price. Maybe the League Cup shouldn’t be allowed to drift into its current torpor.

Perhaps it’s our new status in the Championship and our focus on staying in the division that has forced the competition even further down our list priorities. Perhaps that’s true for everyone in the top two divisions, literally nobody is going to risk their league position to compete in a competition that’s almost certainly going to be won by Manchester City’s millionaire reserves. Perhaps it’s all doomed. Let’s not waste more time on it.

Anyway, we lost 1-0, not that anyone cares?