Should the Community Shield be seen as a legitimate chance to increase Liverpool’s trophy count, or just to increase fitness?…
BACK in May, I was surprised to hear Pep Guardiola’s response to accusations that City had had a poor season. He’d been asked about the importance of their Champions League qualification and came up with an unusual answer.
‘Of course, it’s important to qualify, but except for Newcastle who won the Carabao Cup, Liverpool won the Premier League and Manchester City that won the Community Shield – the other teams didn’t win trophies.’
Fair enough, there are only a small number of competitions to win and who wouldn’t want to play top-level European football, but that last bit threw me.
Pep had grouped the main trophies together and placed his Community Shield in there on an equal footing. That’s quite a statement.
Last year City beat their city rivals United 7-6 on penalties to claim their 7th Community Shield/Charity Shield. I know that because I’ve just looked it up. I had to. I recall nothing of the game whatsoever though I would have certainly watched it.
I take his point though. You’re in these competitions to win them, no matter how important or irrelevant they are. After all, Jose Mourinho won’t be especially remembered for his League Cup wins but he went on record as saying that his 2005 victory (a game, I’m sorry to say, I remember all too vividly) was especially significant as it was first with Chelsea.
This statement wasn’t the first time Guardiola has underlined the importance of the traditional season-opener. Years earlier he described it as ‘the first final of the year.’ I mean, come one. That’s pushing it a bit.
As an experiment then, I wrote down a list of all the Liverpool Charity Shield (and it’s still the ‘Charity Shield’ in my house so I’m sticking with that) victories along with a note of what I could remember.
I started with the 1974 game v Leeds United. I was only 5 years old, but I know that the Leeds keeper, David Harvey, took the final penalty and missed. Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner had a big scrap too.
Then there was a win over Arsenal in 1979 where, I remember, John Motson speaks of a ‘Ken Dalglish’ and our then Assistant Manager, Joe Fagan, inexplicably wore our beautiful and best ever home shirt while sat on the bench. He was also smoking.
It’s all a bit of a blank after that, save for Gerard Houllier’s win, Chelsea in Cardiff and a couple of Jürgen’s. To be honest, I can only remember them because I was at them.
Does the Community Shield really matter?
Alex Ferguson didn’t think so. He admitted that he gave squad players a run out in them just to keep them fit. He got over any Charity Shield defeats by the time he was back on the bus.
Maybe it’s the excitement of seeing the new signings and the very fact that the football is back that gives the fixture any semblance of importance. I’d rather take a defeat against Palace in return for three points against Bournemouth and I don’t think I’m alone there.
It IS a trophy though.
I suppose the Charity Shield only matters if you’re in it and if it comes up in a pub quiz at some point.
That said, I hope we batter Palace. Absolutely batter them.
Up the Champions!
