PREVIEW: Saturday’s Community Shield could be a Manchester derby like no other

Manchester United will take on Manchester City in the curtain-raiser for the 2024/25 season in a repeat of last season’s FA Cup final. But, with first team regulars all coming off the back of gruelling international tournaments, it could be a derby with more unfamiliar faces than we’re used to.

Preview

Here we are again. A mere 76 days ago, both Manchester United and Manchester City rounded out the 2023/24 season with the London bus FA Cup final; you wait 152 years for a Manchester derby in the final and then all of a sudden you get two in a row. Now, both sides will return to Wembley Stadium, facing off against each other once more. Bizarrely enough, City and United’s last two competitive fixtures will have been against each other come Saturday afternoon.

Cast your mind back to that last FA Cup final. It felt like a very different footballing landscape. Erik ten Hag’s future in the North West wasn’t so much on a cliff-edge as it was in free fall. It was a clear picture: whatever the result, he was going to lose his job. Of course, back then, ‘whatever the result’ felt like shorthand for ‘when City win.’ But City didn’t win.

Instead, on that beautifully sunny Saturday afternoon in May, United made mincemeat of their neighbours, whose noisiness had translated, thus far, into a deafening crescendo of dominance. On that day, though, the noise was silenced; City were outplayed not only by their rivals, but also by themselves. It was a comical error from Joško Gvardiol and Stefan Ortega which gifted United their first goal, but the second was courtesy of glorious interplay between Bruno Fernandes and Kobbie Mainoo. The result of that is that Erik ten Hag is still Manchester United manager in August 2024.

That’s all just a memory now. 76 days is a long time in football; since that last meeting, we’ve borne witness to both the European Championships in Germany and the Copa América in the USA. Both City and United have also dipped their toes into the transfer market to thus far unknown levels of success. What this means is that this game will undoubtedly be a very different derby than either of these sides have known for quite some time.

The double-edged sword of international tournaments is such; we get to watch a spectacle for four glorious summer weeks, but come the return of the season, players return at very different rates. The squad City took stateside for preseason contained only five first team regulars, with the Croatian duo of Gvardiol and Mateo Kovačić only joining midway through.

Of course, the result of this was a pretty disjointed set of results from Pep Guardiola’s side. They won none of their first three matches, losing to Celtic and Milan and drawing with Barcelona. It wasn’t until they faced off with Enzo Maresca’s baffling Chelsea side that they would finally find a Stateside win.

For United’s part, there were similar levels of absences; there was no Bruno Fernandes, no Mainoo and no Lisandro Martínez throughout the majority of a preseason which flattered to deceive. Wins over Rangers and Real Betis were sandwiched between losses to Rosenborg, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Neither side really lived up to their names; United didn’t exactly look like the biggest club in the world, and City hardly resembled world champions – but this is just preseason. It does matter, but it also doesn’t. Trying to use preseason results to predict a competitive fixture (a derby no less) is like trying to use a magic eight ball to predict the stock market.

So, it begs the question of which players we’ll actually see on the hallowed turf of Wembley come Saturday evening. The answer to that question is varied. Yes, we’ll be seeing Erling Haaland, Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford, but there are some less established names more than ready to take the place of those who have only recently returned to training.

Kalvin Phillips has been a regular throughout preseason for Manchester City, for example, seemingly reinventing himself as a centre half towards its back end. James McAtee has done a pretty good job of filling the void left by Phil Foden, and Oscar Bobb stole the show in each of their four games, doing his best to convince the world Arjen Robben was Norwegian all along.

Despite those promising performances, the reality is the stars will be missed. There will be no Rodri, John Stones, Kyle Walker or Phil Foden in the City side, with those four players opting to return to training after the Community Shield is done and dusted. Then, of course, there’s Julián Álvarez, who is all but an Atlético Madrid player at this point and certainly won’t be featuring either.

Ten Hag and United put out some unusual squads in their preseason tour, too, with Mason Mount and Amad Diallo featuring regularly with hopes of kickstarting their careers in red, and Jadon Sancho returning to the fold after his successful loan at Borussia Dortmund.

But, like City, it’s the players who won’t feature that are more pertinent; new signing Leny Yoro has undergone foot surgery before he could even think about making a competitive appearance, and Ten Hag has called Victor Lindelöf, Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Luke Shaw ‘question marks’ ahead of the tie. With all that considered, they could well be thin at the back.

The reality is that this is going to be an odd Manchester derby. It’s not going to be a straight replay of last season’s FA Cup final with full strength sides battling it out tooth and nail. There are plenty of first team regulars who are now back; the likes of Rúben Dias, Manuel Akanji, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva have all returned to Manchester City training, and the same goes for Diogo Dalot, Mainoo, Fernandes and Alejandro Garnacho for United, but whether they’ll all be thrown into a starting 11 having not played a minute of preseason is less clear.

In terms of new signings who could feature, Joshua Zirkzee and Sávio could make their United and City debuts respectively, but whether either will start is another issue altogether.

Ominously for City, the Community Shield has been a competition they’ve struggled with recently despite their enormous success in almost every other domestic competition; they’ve not won it since defeating Liverpool on penalties five years ago, succumbing to Leicester City, Liverpool again and Arsenal since then.

That will be a boost for United; no side can better their 21 titles, but they have been on an enforced hiatus in this competition. Saturday will be their first opportunity to win the Community Shield since 2016, when they defeated Leicester City 2-1.

This will also only be the third time the two sides have met in this final – and United have won both. Their last meeting came in 2011, with United prevailing 3-2 courtesy of a very late Nani goal.

So, with all that to consider, predicting the outcome of this game is nigh on impossible. United have all the historic advantages (they’re generally very good in the Community Shield whereas Manchester City are not), but that’s not enough to confidently say they’re the favourites. There are early bragging rights up for grabs, but ultimately this is the Community Shield; the winners will claim it as a trophy, but the losers will chalk it down as one last friendly and one last fitness test before the season really begins next weekend.

The game will be shown on ITV1 and ITVX, and whatever happens at Wembley on Saturday afternoon, you can keep up to date here at FromTheSpot.