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6 hours ago
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Key events
Will Unwin
Manchester City did not make a £120m bid for Enzo Fernández before Chelsea’s 5pm deadline on Friday but Enzo Maresca still expects a busy end to the transfer window, as the club seek incomings and outgoings. Chelsea, meanwhile, now expect the Argentina midfielder to stay at Stamford Bridge.
Maresca takes charge of City for the first time in a major match on Sunday against Arsenal in Cardiff in the Community Shield but is a long way from finalising the squad he will have for the season. Fernández, who played under Maresca at Chelsea, remains a target for City, who could still test the water despite missing the deadline.
Mikel Arteta loves the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s a Championship Manager reference, don’t worry about it.
On the ball – guess the footballer
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Ed Aarons
Mikel Arteta has said he is relaxed about his Arsenal contract expiring at the end of the new season and believes his side will need to be better than last year to defend their title successfully.
The Premier League champions will face Enzo Maresca’s Manchester City in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday and are heavy favourites to win back-to-back league titles for the first time since the 1930s. The departure of Pep Guardiola from their traditional rivals City means Arteta is now the Premier League’s longest-serving manager, with the Spaniard having joined in December 2019.
He signed a three-year contract extension in September 2024 after Arsenal finished as runners-up to City and had been expected to agree a new deal over the summer that would make him one of the highest-paid managers in the world. Arteta acknowledged on Friday that his priorities have been elsewhere this summer as he attempts to strengthen his squad before the new season but reassured supporters that he is fully committed to the club.
The doubt for anyone when a long-strived-for goal has been achieved is hunger. Arsenal waited 22 years for their 14th league title and, compounding the yearning, finished second three times in a row before finally lifting the Premier League trophy in May. The physical exertions of last season were immense – as seen by Declan Rice’s clear exhaustion and Bukayo Saka’s intermittent contributions at the World Cup, where William Saliba picked up a back injury – but so too was the emotional strain.
The first weeks of a new season after a major tournament, especially the World Cup, are often a little erratic anyway, but this feels like a particularly unpredictable start to a campaign. Nine of the 20 Premier League clubs have changed manager this summer. For the first time in 40 years, none of the five big managerial beasts of the Premier League era – Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, José Mourinho, Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola – will be in charge of a club. There are unknowns and uncertainty everywhere, even at Arsenal. Mikel Arteta may be the longest-serving manager in the league but there are questions even there; it would be no great surprise if Arsenal were to start slowly.
Preamble
Football’s back, baby! Yeah, we know it never really went away, but let’s not allow reality to intrude upon a time-honoured Seinfeld reference. The Community Shield remains the symbolic start of the English season, a semi-serious meeting between the league champions and FA Cup winners that acts as a gentle gateway to nine months of hardcore football.
Arsenal and Manchester City have dominated English football for much of the last five seasons, yet this is only their second Community Shield meeting in that time and the fourth overall. There’s a simple reason: until 2025-26, Arsenal’s success came in the form of running City close in the league rather than winning the FA Cup.
When they met in 2023, it was because City won everything the previous season and Arsenal qualified as Premier League runners-up. Cole Palmer, who was about to leave for Chelsea, came off the bench to score a beauty before Leandro Trossard equalised in the 11th minute of added time. Arsenal won on penalties and celebrated wildly.
Mikel Arteta regards that victory, which snapped a run of eight successive defeats to City, as a stepping stone. Two months later they beat City in the Premier League for the first time since 2015; the following season they thrashed City and finished above them for the first time since 2015-16; and last year they held off City to finally claim their 14th league title.
Some will say it’s a load of nonsense – that this is mutton dressed as a trophy, oh and by the way the winners of the Community Shield haven’t gone on to win the Premier League since 2018-19.
But history – certainly the first draft – is written by the winners, or at least on their behalf. It’ll be the same today: either Arteta will confirm his status as the new kingpin of the Premier League or Enzo Maresca will win his first trophy (sic) as Manchester City manager. Baby, the Community Shield’s what you make it.
Kick off 3pm
Andrew Beasley
Bruno Guimarães has broken a very niche record. His £75m move to Arsenal is the most expensive transfer for a midfielder aged at least 28. This should not be taken too seriously given the previous record holder, Zinedine Zidane, moved 25 years ago from Juventus to Real Madrid, and would have cost far more in 2026 money. But it shows how highly the Gunners rate the Brazilian to have spent so much on a player who will be in his 30s before the end of next year. It is a transfer for today, not tomorrow.
