da prosport bet： It’s a debate that has raged on since the beginning of time; is the Community Shield anything more than a glorified friendly celebrated with an oversized fifty pence piece? Can it tell us anything about the new season, how the two clubs involved will fare and who we should be betting our mortgages on to win the Premier League title?
da bwin： The obvious fundamental caveat is that the teams involved can only beat who they’re put up against. Take Manchester United versus Wigan in 2013, for example. With the Latics relegated after their famous FA Cup win, the Red Devils systematically strolled past them in a 2-0 affair.
But they still finished David Moyes’ single season in charge in seventh place, the club’s lowest final standing of the Premier League era, and started the campaign with three defeats from their first six games. Beating a Championship side at Wembley wasn’t much of an indicator of the debasing season ahead.
That being said, the teams involved in the Community Shield over the last five years have been generally of the highest possible quality, the other exception being post-title-winning Leicester City last season. Aside from them, only Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United have featured in the last five Community Shields and rather tellingly, the former duo will be the participants once again this weekend. Contests between any of those, therefore, should at least give a hint of how well prepared they are for the new season in comparison to a direct divisional rival.
Yet, partly because no Premier League side has successfully defended the Premier League title since 2009, there’s no clear pattern amongst the winners. Three of the last five winners at Wembley have finished in a worse position than in the season previous, and on the two occasions in which they finished higher, both involving Arsenal, they still started the top flight season poorly – the Gunners losing their first game of 2015/16 to West Ham and winning just twice in eight games at the start of 2014/15, plummeting down to eighth place.
Losing the Community Shield final, however, has proved to be a far more significant indicator in recent seasons. In comparison, only once during the last five years has a side finished in a higher league position than the year previous after losing in Wembley’s curtain raiser, that exception being Chelsea in 2012 after they’d unexpectedly finished the term prior in sixth place.
In fact, excluding Wigan who were in a different league, the Community Shield’s last five losers have all finished on average 5.5 places worse off in the subsequent season.
More than just a statistical trend, however, there are interesting anecdotal examples here, too. Back in 2015 for instance, Jose Mourinho was yet to lose a fixture to Arsene Wenger. But the Community Shield final bucked that trend as Arsenal beat a Chelsea side whose winless pre-season was already creating concern and the Blues went on to the finish the term in 10th, with Mourinho sacked in December. Since then, Wenger has lost to his old rival just once from three meetings, winning another in a comfortable 2-0.
It was a similar story for Leicester last time out. They and United both struggled for any sort of rhythm in the 2016 meeting and after losing 2-1, it quickly became apparent that Leicester had lost the unique sparkle which made them the Premier League’s unlikeliest of champions the season prior.
Just like Mourinho and Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri eventually lost his job and the Foxes finished the campaign in 12th place. Likewise, although they went on to finish the season in a higher position than their opponents, Manchester City’s defeat to Arsenal in 2014 highlighted how Manuel Pellegrini’s title-winners had lost that killer instinct. He was eventually moved on for Pep Guardiola too.
Of course, most managers will tell you that performances matter far more than results in pre-season and although there may be a trophy at the end of it, the Community Shield is still essentially a friendly warm-up, albeit likely the most competitive of the summer, that offers the chance to improve fitness, assess potential tactical ploys and get a closer look at the opposition. On Sunday, both managers will still experiment and give as much game-time to as many players as possible.
But whilst victory for either team this weekend may not prove much, losing tends to suggest a difficult campaign ahead, one that brings considerably less fortune than the term prior and in the cases of the last three Community Shields eventual managerial dismissals. Perhaps for the sake of appearances more than anything else then, Arsene Wenger and Antonio Conte both need the win on Sunday.