It is never pleasant to lose the first official game of the season. It is even worse to do so against one's bitter city rivals, especially if one has enjoyed the upper hand over them stretching back several seasons. However, this past Sunday on August 2nd, reigning Premier League champions Chelsea started off their season on a sour note as Arsenal fought hard to edge them out 1-0 courtesy of a first-half goal from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. As such, not only were the Gunners successfully able to defend their Community Shield title, but also it marked the first time in 14 meetings that Arsene Wenger was finally able to beat his managerial nemesis Jose Mourinho in an on-going feud spanning 11 years.
Well, with Chelsea's opening Premier League game just around the corner, Mourinho will have already turned his attention to guiding his side to defend their league crown. Still, the loss, despite many marking the Community Shield as a "glorified friendly", will still sting, especially when it was followed up with a frustrating 1-0 defeat to Serie A's Fiorentina at Stamford Bridge this week. However, despite having to endure some gloating from gleeful Gunners fans that may share the same office, Blues supporters will likely end up having the last laugh in May, if recent history and stats are anything to go by.
Since the creation of the Premier League in 1992, there have been 23 editions of the Community Shield, which was known as the Charity Shield until 2002. There have been only seven occasions in which a team have managed to win the season opener in August and make it onto the winner's podium in May to lift the coveted Premier League title, and the last time a team did so was Manchester United during the 2010/2011 campaign.
Out of those seven seasons, the Red Devils have achieved this "double" five times; in addition to the aforementioned 2010/2011 term, they were successful in 1993/1994, 1996/1997, 2007/2008, and 2008/2009. Chelsea have won the other two, in 2005/2006 and 2009/2010. Arsenal, however, have yet to achieve this, despite winning it five times prior to earning their sixth this past Sunday.
In 2013, Manchester United won their most recent Community Shield under new manager David Moyes, but it would be a hollow victory. Red Devils supporters worldwide will surely shudder at the thought of that awful campaign that saw the then-reigning Premier League champions break all sorts of records for the wrong reasons.
Beware the Community Shield? Manchester United might have won it two seasons ago, but failed to even make the top four in the league
By the time the dust had settled, England's most decorated side had finished in a shockingly poor seventh place, meaning that not only had they failed to make the top four for the first time since the establishment of the Premier League but also to secure a European football spot for the first time in 25 years.
Now, many would argue that Manchester United's poor season after winning the 2013 Community Shield was an anomaly, and every big club has endured a shocking bad campaign - or several. Nonetheless, if one were to go back even further, to the 1980/1981 campaign 35 years ago, there have only been 10 seasons in which the winner of the Community/Charity Shield ended up celebrating the league title in May.
Hence, although it will not be easy for Chelsea as they are now the team to beat, Blues fans ought not to fret too much about their season-opener loss. After all, the past numbers indicate that the odds are not in favor of whoever wins the first trophy of the season to conclude it as the champions of English football, and time will tell as to whether Arsenal will be able to buck that trend this upcoming May.
