So Manchester City start the season with a comfortable win, lifting the Community Shield after a comfortable 2-0 win over Chelsea at Wembley. Better performances, sterner tests and more significant stages lie ahead, but there was an ominous impressiveness about City, a sense of a team slowly clicking into gear.
It’s very rare that the Community Shield has anything more than symbolic value, as a glance down the recent winners demonstrates. Arsenal has won it in three of the past four seasons, and it has never signalled a season of anything other than the familiar old frustrations. David Moyes enjoyed a victorious start as Manchester United manager in 2013, and that didn’t turn out well either.