Carabao Cup quarter-finals: Bristol City host Manchester United after draw delay – as it happened

“English efficiency at its best,” says James Boyle. “World Cup, anyone?”

I think we can all agree that football was the winner. Right, I’m off for several cans of sweet, sweet Carabao. We’ll have a full report on that shambles up shortly – technical issues notwithstanding.

So after all that, the draw is sent out via a pre-recorded clip, complete with bad sound, stuttering graphics and both Tuffers and Dawson “having to get off soon”. It’s an interesting draw, with José Mourinho off to Ashton Gate, but that scarcely seems important any more.

The draw has now been delayed for over 100 minutes – enough time to have played the quarter-final ties, never mind drawn them.

This suggestion is looking better with every minute that passes:

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“Can’t they just write the eight names on a piece of paper and stick them in a hat? That used to work fine in my Subbuteo playing days,” writes Jeremy Adams. Switch ‘hat’ for ‘empty can of Carabao’ and I think they’ll go for it.

Twitter are supposed to be broadcasting the draw live from their HQ, but ‘technical difficulties’ are not much of an excuse when presumably, Tuffers and/or Dawsers possess a smartphone that could broadcast the draw. That Rod Stewart business is starting to look sophisticated by comparison:

And here’s a nice read from Andy Hunter on Rhian Brewster. The Liverpool youngster has led England U17s to a World Cup final despite not being born when this draw was scheduled to take place.

Anyone who’s now back from listening to Football Weekly Extraaa will notice my joke has backfired spectacularly. If you haven’t yet, why not? There’s nothing else going on!

“If the delay goes the full 90, do we have a replay or go straight to penalties?” asks Gary Wilson.

As far as I know, the eight remaining managers will try to boot a regulation petrol station football over a warehouse. If anyone does it, their team gets the Cup.

The farce continues

“The hot, steamy reality of Thailand – sure I’ve seen that film…” hoots Richard Powell. The draw is now 68 minutes late.

It’s been a rough day for conference rooms – Greg Clarke has been talking again, there was another angry Arsenal AGM, and now this. Catch up with today’s box-fresh Fiver:

“In the hot, steamy reality of Thailand, you need energy to get you through the day.” So begins ‘The Legend of Carabao’, which also tells me the drink was invented by Aed Carabao, “Thailand’s answer to Bruce Springsteen.” So now you know.

This is, incredibly enough, not the biggest hash made of a League Cup draw so far this season:

Still hoping for some hot draw action at 5pm sharp, but this tweet has me worried. ‘Within the hour’?

In the interests of balance...

There were none of these problems when Donald Trump carried out the Rumbelows Cup fifth-round draw. In fact, it was a great draw. The best.

Carabao: your reviews

And viewing – this guy’s had his Carabao!

Some pre-delayed-draw reading:

I haven’t – and I don’t know anyone who has! If you’ve sampled it, let me know. We’ve got plenty of time to kill.

“I think Tuffers and Dawson are doing the draw in the style of the charades round from A Question of Sport and nobody’s managed to guess the first team yet,” honks Andrew Papps. “They should have made sure Sue Barker turned up as well to give them the answers.”

Just got an email that simply says “7”. Is this part of the draw?

Still waiting. I’ve just done a mock draw myself, to see if drawing eight teams is actually much harder than I’d thought. It isn’t. I’m not going to divulge the fictional ties, but there are some corkers in there.

Football Weekly Extraaaaa has landed, so go and give it a listen, and come back to me in 58 minutes for the draw:

The draw comes with a Twitter feed attached, with lots of supportive and encouraging tweets flying in as time ticks on. This is probably the best one.

The draw appears to have been delayed by a few minutes. So far this season, we’ve seen teams drawn out twice, a mute Facebook feed from Bangkok and the third-round draw taking place at 4.15am BST, so this is nothing new.

“The whole AFC thing smacks of foreigners, what with their AC Milan and TP-47 and such like,” bellows Simon Thomas. “Once Brexit comes, Bournemouth and Wimbledon should drop the fancy prefixes and just hoof it long.”

No sign of Tuffers or Dawsers yet – I’m keeping myself busy refreshing the Carabao Cup Twitter page, which has a header to remember. Carabaos all round!

“Are the organisers having a dig at poor old Arsène?” asks Charles Antaki. “The list of clubs is obviously alphabetical, except that Arsenal have been demoted to second place. They might as well have got a light aircraft to fly the thing on a banner over the television studio.”

The real, less amusing reason is that Bournemouth are down as ‘AFC Bournemouth’ in the official draw. Why? I don’t know.