It's the Capital One Cup this week with teams battling to reach the quarter-finals.
There are five ties tomorrow night and another three on Wednesday – the highlight being Manchester City v Newcastle United – before the draw for the last eight is made.
When people talk to me about the League Cup, they often talk about it in sort of second-class terms, but it’s a competition which can be of huge benefit to clubs and also to players.
One of my best memories of the League Cup is one of my first – playing against Arsenal.
It was the 1993-94 season, the first under Neil Warnock and, after knocking out Scarborough in the two-legged first round we drew the Gunners in round two.
I was only young and had not been involved much at all with the first team up to then, because Iwan Roberts was the centre forward.
I don’t know what went on, but I think Iwan and the gaffer had had some sort of disagreement and, when it came to naming the team to face Arsenal at Leeds Road, I was in the No9 shirt.
Iwan had been dropped and I was up against Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Nigel Winterburn and Lee Dixon!
Our plan was to keep it as tight as we could at home, but Arsenal beat us 5-0.
When we went down to Highbury for the second leg, we got an early goal through Iain Dunn and we were unlucky not to win really, but it finished in a 1-1 draw.
At the final whistle, we got a standing ovation from the Arsenal fans for the way we played and the whole experience was brilliant – the club down there and the staff were superb towards us.
The follow-on from that match was when Tony Adams wrote his autobiography. One of the questions to him was obviously: “Who was the best header of a ball you ever came up against?”
And the answer was me!
He said he couldn’t ever remember winning a header against Andy Booth.
So it will be interesting to see how teams approach their ties over the next couple of days, because once you are in the last eight the prospect of Wembley starts to loom very large indeed.
The League Cup, now sponsored by Capital One of course – it was the Coca-Cola Cup when we played against Arsenal – is a competition where the smaller clubs can do well, just ask Bradford City from a couple of seasons ago.
It's great to do my job as an Ambassador for Town and be heavily involved in the community – it really is rewarding.
Our chairman, Dean Hoyle, wanted the club to be a ‘Community Club’ when he took over and a lot of work goes into achieving that on a daily basis.
Supporters might not generally be aware, but we now have 90 School Partners, and it’s great to get the players out to make visits and do assemblies.
People probably noticed, too, that the manager, Chris Powell, went out and did an assembly at The Ardron Memorial School at Linthwaite.
In the six years since we started doing this, Chris is the first manager who has ever got involved – and he was absolutely fantastic.
I don’t think the staff and children at the school could believe their luck, but everyone enjoyed it and the manager had some very inspirational things to say to them.
I think he was quite surprised, too, when the Examiner had taken a video of him and put it on their website (above).
Chris watched it back and thought the reaction of everyone was wonderful, so it was a success on all fronts.
Joel Lynch and Sean Scannell went out with me last week to do a breakfast club at Dalton for the Town Foundation, while Lloyd Allinson was on duty to do an assembly to welcome Rowley Lane to our group of School Partners.
Incidentally, Chris Powell is speaking to the Patrons at PPG Canalside on November 17, while the Young Terriers are watching the senior squad train tomorrow morning, before having lunch, meeting the players and getting pictures and autographs.
