What Community Shield history says about title races

The Community Shield has long been viewed as the traditional curtain-raiser to the English football season, but history suggests lifting the trophy offers little guarantee of Premier League success.

Arsenal and Manchester City meet at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on Sunday with the first piece of silverware of the new campaign on the line. Yet statistics from the Premier League era indicate the winners often fail to carry that momentum into the title race.

BBC Sport’s analysis shows only eight of the 34 Community Shield winners since the Premier League was formed in 1992 have gone on to become English champions in the same season. Manchester City’s triumph in 2019 remains the last occasion the winners completed that double, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United achieved the feat in 2011.

The numbers become even more striking in recent years. Just one of the previous 15 Community Shield winners has ended the campaign as Premier League champions, underlining how little the result has predicted the destination of the title. Teams beaten in the fixture have actually enjoyed greater league success over the same period, including Manchester City’s championship-winning seasons between 2021 and 2023.

There is, however, some encouragement for whichever side prevails in Cardiff. Community Shield winners have finished above the beaten finalists in the league table on 18 occasions, while the two participants have ended the season as the top two clubs 10 times since 1992.

The fixture has also produced mixed indicators for individual players. Cole Palmer scored for Manchester City in the 2023 Community Shield before enjoying a breakthrough campaign after his move to Chelsea. Darwin Nunez found the net on his Liverpool debut in 2022, while Erling Haaland failed to score that day before finishing the season with 52 goals in all competitions. Raheem Sterling also used his 2019 Community Shield goal as a springboard to the most prolific campaign of his career.

For Arsenal and Manchester City, Sunday’s contest remains an opportunity to begin the season with silverware. History, though, suggests the Community Shield is better viewed as an early test than a reliable indicator of who will be crowned Premier League champions next May.