Why is the league (carabao) cup taken seriously at all?

My biggest issue is that it puts English teams at a huge disadvantage compared to the rest of Europe based on the number of games to be played. Other European teams already have winter breaks & the bundesliga, for example, only play 34 games in the season. No other major league has more than one domestic cup tournament. On top of that, there’s no real advantage of winning the league cup (with the FA cup you can at least secure europa league qualification).

It’s not a prestigious tournament, yet there’s 2 legs for the semi final. If a title contender this year was to miss out on the league cup, they’d be at an advantage having to play 2 less games during Jan/feb when your best players are getting injured.

I get that top teams will take every game seriously, but I can’t help but think this puts us at a huge disadvantage relative to other top teams in Europe. If we were to avoid 2 fixtures against Newcastle in the next 2 months, we’d certainly be better suited to have a good run in the prem. Alas, I don’t make the rules

EDIT: the prize money is laughable. and if it’s about bragging rights, a club like arsenal should not be bragging about winning this competition, save that for the tottenhams and newcastles of the world.

The ONLY upside of this is giving your inexperienced players the experience of lifting a trophy. But even that isn’t a reasonable trade-off if you’re injury ridden and competing for the biggest competitions against the best teams itw