The curtain raiser to the English domestic football season takes place at Wembley Stadium on Sunday afternoon as Chelsea take on Arsenal in the FA Community Shield. The traditional season opener sees the Premier League champions taking on the FA Cup champions. Arsenal won this piece of silverware last year and will hope to do so again.
Although this is just a glorified friendly it does give the chance for both sides to lay a bit of a marker down a week before the Premier League kicks off but given that the first matches for both sides are six and seven days away we can expect to see plenty of changes as this match goes on.
Chelsea go into the match off the back of a pretty mixed pre-season campaign. They’ve recently returned from America where they were beaten by the New York Red Bulls before drawing with PSG and Barcelona, winning both matches on a penalty shootout. It is folly to take too much from pre-season matches but Chelsea did look sloppy in all three of those games.
Arsenal have had a much more solid build up to the season. They saw off Everton in Singapore before absolutely thumping Lyon in the Emirates Cup recently. They followed that up with a win over Wolfsburg, the Bundesliga runners-up so nobody can deny Arsenal are in good shape going into the new season.
Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has confirmed Gary Cahill and Diego Costa are available for the match despite the niggles they picked up in America. Radamel Falcao could start the match but he’ll definitely play some part in the game even if he doesn’t get the nod straight away.
Chelsea will come up against a familiar face in this match as Petr Cech is expected to start between the sticks for the Gunners. Alexis Sanchez has been given time off after his Copa America exertions but Mesut Ozil was in sublime form against Lyon and will hope to continue where he left off in that match.
If you read anything into pre-season form then you would definitely take Arsenal in this match despite the Wenger’s infamous poor record against Mourinho but I don’t read much into what’s gone before if I’m honest.
I do think this match is more competitive than most friendlies though and I expect to see some competitiveness to it here too but primarily it is an exercise in being fit for next week. Competitiveness isn’t the only thing I expect to see here.
I expect to see goals too. Five of the last six Community Shields have had more than 2.5 goals and with the match offering a platform for the attacking players to show their skills under no pressure I’m expecting to see some goals here too. Arsenal beat Man City 3-0 here last year. They might not repeat that but whatever the end result I fancy it to contain at least three goals.
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