Preview : Community Shield

We have got a spicy match coming up tomorrow as Chelsea take on Manchester United in the community Shield.




The Community Shield is the showpiece match staged between the League champions and FA Cup winners one week before the start of the Premiership - and this one, on Sunday, is being held at Wembley for the first time since 2000 now that the national stadium has been rebuilt.

Coincidentally, that 2000 Shield also involved this weekend's protagonists - Chelsea and Manchester United, and then as now the Blues had won the FA Cup the previous May, while the Red Devils were League champions.

Chelsea won that game 2-0 thanks to goals by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Mario Melchiot, both long gone from Stamford Bridge; and Chelsea also beat United on the last occasion the two teams met at Wembley. That, of course, was in last season's FA Cup final, when Jose Mourinho's side, having been denied a third successive Premiership title by United's sustained challenge, August-to-May, got a
measure of revenge by winning the Cup to thwart United's Double dream.


New Faces

Tomorrow's meeting will not be just about pride, or revenge; it will also be about the fine-tuning of the two teams, particularly with new players to be bedded in. United were busy this summer bringing in Owen Hargreaves, Nani, Anderson, Tomasz Kuszczak and, it seems, Carlos Tevez. However not all of them will be involved against Chelsea on Sunday.

Chelsea have added Florent Malouda, Tal Ben Haim, Claudio Pizarro, Steve Sidwell and Danny Philliskirk.


Pre-Season Form Guide

Chelsea
Tuesday, 31 July v Brondby (A) WON 2-0
Saturday, 28 July v Rangers (A) LOST 0-2
Wednesday, 25 July v Feyenoord (A) DREW 1-1
Saturday 21 July v LA Galaxy (A) WON 1-0

Manchester Utd
Wednesday, 01 August v Inter Milan (H) LOST 2-3
Friday, 27 July v Guangzhou (A) WON 3-0
Monday, 23 July v Shenzhen Jianlibao (A) WON 6-0
Friday, 20 July v FC Seoul (A) WON 4-0
Tuesday, 17 July v Urawa Red Diamonds (A) DREW 2-2


TEAM NEWS

Chelsea

Ankle injuries rule out both Wayne Bridge and Michael Ballack, while a knee injury means Salomon Kalou misses out. But Arjen Robben, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole are all available.

Lampard is expected to be in contention after Chelsea denied that he had been playing through the pain barrier with a broken toe sustained on the pre-season tour of the United States. And assistant manager Steve Clarke said that Lampard would be central to the Blues' plans for the Community Shield.

Taking his cue from earlier comments by Mourinho, Clarke suggested that Chelsea are going to be more expansive this year. "The 4-4-2 system with wingers is one we have not used before. We have worked on it extensively in pre-season, and the 4-3-3 system we know inside out. It will all give us good options," he said.

"We want to be a bit more expansive this year, and the wingers can give us that something different."

Manchester United

Captain Gary Neville is still suffering from the ankle injury that ruled him out of the latter stages of last season, while Paul Scholes, Louis Saha and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer are injured. Ferguson has indicated that new signings Hargreaves and Anderson will not be involved - Anderson having played in the reserve friendly win over Doncaster on Friday night.

United centre-back Nemanja Vidic says the team's back four will be back to their best against Chelsea after suffering a few lapses in Wednesdays friendly against Inter Milan. Vidic said: “It is a concern we gave those three goals away against Inter because we didn’t keep our shape and made a lot of mistakes. But Inter were a lot better team than anyone else we have played in pre-season so if we are going to make those errors, it is better to do it against them than in another couple of weeks. No team plays well at this stage, not even Chelsea or Arsenal....I am sure we will improve defensively and our overall performance will be much better.”

SQUADS

Chelsea: (from) Cech, Cudicini, Hilario, Ferreira, A Cole, Diarra, Sidwell, Essien, Lampard, Robben, Mikel, Malouda, J Cole, Drogba, Shevchenko, Ben Haim, Pizarro, Terry, Carvalho.

Man Utd: (from) Van der Sar, Kuszczak, Brown, Bardsley, Pique, Simpson, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evans, Silvestre, Evra, Ronaldo, Fletcher, O'Shea, Carrick, Eagles, Giggs, Rooney.


WATCH OUT FOR:

Chelsea: With so much talent at his disposal, it is anybody's guess who Jose Mourinho will start with. But if Joe Cole is involved this is the sort of match, played on the sort of stage, in which he could shine. And of course Didier Drogba is the perennial danger-man who can win the game for Chelsea in an instant. But expect Michael Essien to be major influence in midfield.

Manchester United: Cristiano Ronaldo did not do his talent justice in the FA Cup final and may see this as the opportunity to put the record straight. If he can reproduce his form from most of last season, he wil be more than a handful for Chelsea's defence - and a beneficiary could be Wayne Rooney, who will probably be shouldering the bulk of the striking responsibilities this season.

What's ur prediction?