Opinion: New Blues boss Karanka will have a conundrum on his hands in his first game in charge

The right place, at the right time.

That’s pretty much the best way that I can sum up this latest update for Birmingham City and some of our players.

On Tuesday we saw the news that Blues will play Cambridge United in the first round of the Carabao Cup. What’s interesting to note, is that due to the football calendar taking a bit of a beating and looking very different than it has in the past, this will in fact be our first game of the season, played the weekend before the first league game of the campaign.

Now given that the Carabao Cup has become a way for teams to rest players in recent seasons, with former Blues boss Pep Clotet arguably going a bit too far last season and receiving the wrath of the fanbase as a result, it will be interesting to see how new head coach Aitor Karanka sees this game against the League Two side.

I spoke earlier today about the idea of players being given their fair chance to prove themselves under the new boss, and this game could prove to be one of those vital opportunities for players to get some game time. Whether they be the senior players who returned on loan like David Davis or Steve Seddon, or some of our academy players who are on the cusp of making that breakthrough into the first-team.

I personally wouldn’t hold my breath for wholesale changes to the ‘regular’ starting eleven, if you take a look at Karanka’s track record when it comes to domestic cups in this country, you can see that he won’t treat this as just a throwaway game, he’s got a good record and he’ll play to win.

I just hope that he sprinkles a few changes here and there in order to get a good look at the entire team rather than relying solely on the players that didn’t pull up many trees last campaign.