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On The Ball
Community Shield may be a curse, but Man City and Arsenal can gain from a victory
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Arsenal's Kai Havertz is one of the new faces as the Gunners take on Manchester City in the Community Shield on Aug 6.
PHOTO: REUTERS
To draw conclusions from the Community Shield, English football’s traditional curtain-raiser, can be a fool’s errand. Take last season’s renewal between Manchester City and Liverpool for example, where Jurgen Klopp’s team ran riot, Darwin Nunez announcing himself with a match-winning cameo.
Erling Haaland, with a couple of misses, exhibited himself as a potential dud. How did all that play out by season’s end? The opposite way around, pretty much. Haaland was soon on his way to demolishing goalscoring records while Nunez remains a player with much to prove.
