Today see’s the 92nd FA Community Shield match take place at Wembley Stadium between Arsenal and Manchester City.
Manchester City qualify by being the 2013-2014 Premier League winners while Arsenal qualify as winners of the 2014 FA Cup final.
This will be the 20th time that Arsenal have played in the Community Shield match of which they have gone on to win 12 times, while Manchester City will be making their 10th appearance and have won the Shield 4 times.
In preparation for the upcoming 2014-2015 season Arsenal recently hosted their annual Emirates Cup tournament, finishing second to Spanish team Valencia.
In their two matches they defeated Portuguese team Benfica 5-1, with Yaya Sanogo scoring 4 goals, before losing out to French Ligue 1 team AS Monaco 1-0 the following day.
Manchester City have recently been in the USA taking part in the 2014 International Champions Cup.
They finished that tournament with 1 win and 2 draws which they subsequently lost on penalties. Their results in the Champions Cup were a 5-1 win over AC Milan, and 2-2 draws with Liverpool and Olympiacos.
Neither side will go into this fixture at full strength today.
Arsenal will be without goalkeeper David Ospina who has sustained a thigh injury, and German World Cup players Per Mertesacker, Mesut Ozil, and Lukas Podolski are still on sanctioned leave after their successful campaign.
Manchester City striker Alvaro Negredo suffered a serious foot injury in the pre-season and will not take part while new arrival Frank Lamapard and fellow World Cup players Sergio Aguero, Bacary Sagna, Martin Demichelis, Fernandinho, Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta will all be rested following their campaigns with their respective national teams.
Conclusion
Hard to tell which way this one might go with two new squads still in pre-season and missing a number of big name players, so we’ll go down the middle and predict a 90 minute draw.
Arsenal draw Manchester City
