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Woo! Fresh from a "summer off," the Mighty Blues of Chelsea are back in action. For real this time. Well, it's the Community Shield, so not "for real" for real. That's next weekend against Wigan. No offence to Wigan, but wouldn't you rather have the glamorous fixture against City as the start of our season? I would.
Any way, rather than being played at Wembley, as is usual, the game will be coming to us from "glamorous" Villa Park due to some silly quadrennial sport festival. Because the biggest and best stadia in Britain were in use for the Olympics, and London full of people attending, we were left with Villa Park. The Stadium last hosted the Community Shield in 1972, a game which, incidentally, Manchester City won.
At the end of the day, this will be an interesting match. It'll probably be tense, like our recent league encounters, and, as a result, not nearly as fun as the Olympic Final yesterday where Oscar scored three times in the first half only for Giovani Dos Santos to claw it back to force extra time, before a Neymar sealed the victory for Mexico by scoring an own goal off his backside.* [*I'm writing this on Friday, and I'm not changing it.]
Enjoy everybody!
:Lineups:
Manchester City starting lineup (4-2-3-1): Costel Pantilimon; Aleksandar Kolarov, Vincent Kompany, Stefan Savic, Pablo Zabaleta; James Milner, Nigel de Jong; Samir Nasri, Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero; Carlos Tevez.
Chelsea starting lineup (4-2-3-1): Petr Cech; Ashley Cole, John Terry, David Luiz, Branislav Ivanovic; Frank Lampard, John Obi Mikel; Eden Hazard, Juan Mata, Ramires; Fernando Torres.
Substitutes from: Ross Turnbull, Gary Cahill, Ryan Bertrand, Raul Meireles, Lucas Piazon, Daniel Sturridge, Michael Essien.
Officials: Kevin Friend (R), Michael McDonough (A), Richard West (A), Anthony Taylor (4th)