Friday, August 9, 2024

The starting-gun...

The FA Community Shield trophy - the prize for charity game that is the traditional curtain-raiser to the English football season

 

The FA Community Shield is played tomorrow afternoon at Wembley between last year's Premier League Champions, Manchester City, and the FA Cup Winners, Manchester United.

Though long dismissed as a "glorified friendly", and not always played with the normal starting eleven or at a full competitive pace, in recent years most participants have been approaching the game much more seriously - seeing it as a valuable opportunity to kick their season off with a trophy win and perhaps gain a psychological edge over one of their closest rivals.  Thus, it is these days usually a better guide to form and line-ups (though still far from 100% reliable) than any of the other pre-season games.


Hence, it's well worth watching, if you can - to get a sense of where these clubs are at for the start of the new season.

And then, next week, you can begin thinking about picking your FPL squad....


[If you've been hard at it, drafting multiple preliminary squads already over the past month - you've not just been wasting your time, you've been actively harming your prospects.]



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