Gunner Be Good?

The Community Shield. It sounds like something the Americans might sell to Israel, or hand out to a veteran law-enforcer in some dodgy bit of downtown Detroit. It is in fact a meaningless piece of football entertainment which was fine when it was called the 'Charity Shield'. After all, every sort of nonsense can be passed off as entertainment if it's done for charity. Which of course this still is. So the name-change has always been a tad baffling.

Although now it's supported by McDonald's, the world's most famous purveyors of a Healthy Lifestyle.

But I'm being too grouchy about all this aren't I? It's a lovely old traditional curtain-raiser to the season. Or the last game of pre-season if you're Manuel Pellegrini. Nothing to do with the real business of winning trophies but a cheery enough afternoon in the sunshine and a chance for fans of title-winning clubs to come down to London to collectively gloat in public once more.

This Community Shield felt different though, somehow. Maybe it was the aching feeling I had for the resumption of football hostilities following that cracking World Cup. (Although that was more than somewhat sated by Boro's consummate despatch of last season's gallows-dodgers Birmingham City.)

But perhaps it was more that on this occasion one team seemed ever so desperate to win it. Wenger's men played like men whose ship has finally come in; men who have returned to the pawnshop to reclaim the trinkets they left there nine years ago. They were determined, focused and, but for Sanogo, neat and tidy.

Sanogo still looks constantly surprised to find the ball at his feet. And when he does find it, he looks like a man shaking a snarling Jack Russell off the flares of his trousers. He's very un-Arsene.

Still even his clumsy contributions worked out and the Gunners looked good from front to back... Sanchez is a good fit, Cazorla looked relieved to not be playing with that atrocious Spanish team (I mean if they were my national team I'd... I'd be bloody delighted, frankly) and Aaron Ramsey is now a fully-fledged box-to-box, heart-and-soul, midfield maestro of the type these isles very rarely have the pleasure of producing. Indeed you can pretty much chart the best bits of Arsenal's last season according to young Aaron's availability.

Citeh, meanwhile, played like a bunch of holidaymakers assembled for a beachfront kickabout. Pellegrini betrayed almost no interest in the fixture. Hardly any of the first-teamers played. (Well apart from Yaya of course, whose off-season negotiations regarding his next birthday party are in an advanced stage as I understand it.)

Lampard watched from the terraces, in order to get used to his role in domestic fixtures. Fernando looked like another of them half-bit Brazilian holding midfielders that have polluted world football recently - in fact I forgot he wasn't Fernandinho most of the time. Silva, like Santi unburdened by tacky tika-taka, prompted a bit of a revival in the second half but by then the damage was done.

As for Willy Caballero, well far from being the Mexican porn star I had assumed he was, he turned out to be a decent enough keeper who couldn't have down owt to have prevented the goals.

Citeh's central defence looked rather flaky without the comforting presence of Kompany but it was ever thus and maybe this lad Mangala will be an answer given that Demichelis can be a tad creaky and Nastasic still looks raw. Boyata's presence in the squad at all is as deep a mystery as the continuing employment of Phillipe Senderos as a professional footballer.

It was good to see Scott Sinclair and Micah Richards get a run-out but I think that might be it for the season, boys. Quite why your agents aren't hawking you from Torquay to Tallahassee is beyond me. I'm mighty pleased that Jack Rodwell has hauled his sorry ass off the Etihad seating. These two should take his advice and do the same.

But it was hard, even in what is always a redundant fixture, not to be impressed with the Gooners. Wilshere was bright and breezy but please God will the lad stop falling over? Half the time he looks less like a footballer and more like some urchin who can't quite get off a bouncy castle.

Wenger's squad looks deeper, with the Germans still to return. That might make them less prone to getting utterly tonked in the first 45 minutes of games. They might well be eyeing what Liverpool did last season and thinking: 'We too might be able to get ourselves into a winning position and utterly fuck it up at Crystal Palace'.

But can they win the title this year? Really? Well it puts them in the mix, and with Liverpool's pre-season going brilliantly, Chelsea armed with new signings, including a proper centre-forward this year, and United under the stewardship of a dastardly Dutch dictator, it might even be closer than last year.

But remember, it's very silly to draw any conclusions from a Community Shield match. Why this time last year, David Moyes was smiling contentedly at the capture of his first bit of silverware as a manager. Ha! Yes, in a way he did win something. Bless.

I'll save the full list of predictions for next week but suffice to say that regardless of what happens on an August day in the sunshine, the Premier League title will be Man City's to lose for a few years to come.