Arsenal vs Man City LIVE: Latest Community Shield updates

Just under 15 minutes to go until kick off and the sprinklers are on at Wembley.

The players have been out for their warm-up, the crowd is filling up nic,ely and the sunshine is out, too.

Pretty much set for a lovely curtain-raiser.

The Brazil international went under the knife on Wednesday after experiencing irritation following a more serious operation to treat an injury suffered at the World Cup.

Jesus spent three months on the sidelines recovering during last season as the Gunners ultimately fell short in their Premier League title tilt.

Having been absent for Wednesday night’s Emirates Cup clash with Monaco, Jesus will also miss the start of the new campaign – including Sunday’s Community Shield clash with former club Manchester City.

City have paid RB Leipzig £77 million for the 21-year-old, who passed a medical at the Etihad Stadium on Friday, and he has signed a five-year contract.

The fee is just short of the world record for a defender, the £80 million Manchester United paid for Harry Maguire in 2019, and Gvardiol becomes City’s second summer signing, after his international teammate Mateo Kovacic.

Gvardiol believes he can improve under Pep Guardiola, who he called the world’s outstanding manager, after agreeing to join the treble winners.

The two rivals meet in Sunday’s Community Shield, the Gunners taking part after they finished second to treble-winning City last year.

Arsenal led the way for much of the campaign but lost both home and away to Pep Guardiola’s men, who have now claimed five of the last six league crowns.

Pep Guardiola’s intended audience may have been in Barcelona. It often has been, though usually when he was their midfielder, captain or manager. In seven years in Manchester, Guardiola has frequently had to address matters at the Camp Nou, though it was usually only to deny that Lionel Messi was bound for the Etihad Stadium.

Now the subject of another saga is a player from his present, not the increasingly distant past. Manchester City’s summers seem to consist of two rituals: lifting the Premier League trophy and then enduring a wait to see if Bernardo Silva stays. The Portuguese’s most persistent admirers are in Catalonia. The other constant is that Barcelona repeatedly refuse to meet City’s asking price. Sometimes they receive no firm proposal while a cash-strapped club with a recruitment policy based on hoping their allure will encourage players to engineer their exit seemingly think they can acquire elite footballers on the cheap.

It is a team from another time, a glimpse of Arsenal’s post-Arsene Wenger identity crisis and Mikel Arteta’s decidedly imperfect inheritance. There are David Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi, Dani Ceballos and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Alexandre Lacazette and Nicolas Pepe. They assume a greater pertinence now, and not merely as signs of the transformation of a side in three years.

They remain the only Arteta side to beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, 2-0 in the 2020 FA Cup semi-final, courtesy of a brace from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Now, as Arteta’s current and former clubs prepare to meet at Wembley again, this time in the Community Shield, there is the probability that the Arsenal starting XI will feature no survivors of one of the manager’s first major wins. Perhaps Kieran Tierney but Granit Xhaka, the last regular in Arteta’s strongest side, was sold in the summer.

And while Emi Martinez left Arsenal and went on to lift the World Cup, few of the others have experienced better times since Arteta’s FA Cup win.

And Arsenal’s team for Wembley includes three new signings: Kai Havertz, Declan Rice and Jurrien Timber.

ARS XI: Ramsdale, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Timber, Partey, Rice, Odegaard, Saka, Havertz, Martinelli.

Man City XI confirmed: Kyle Walker captains the team while both Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez start up front.

MCI: Ortega Moreno, Walker (C), Stones, Dias, Akanji, Rodrigo, Kovacic, Bernardo, Grealish, Alvarez, Haaland

The first match of any season involving top-flight clubs is the Community Shield, and that’s exactly where we find ourselves once more ahead of the 2023/24 campaign.

Arsenal and Manchester City will meet at Wembley on Sunday to battle for the first, and most minor, piece of silverware of the year, with the Premier League winners and runners-up having both been head-to-head in the transfer market this summer as well as towards the back-end of last term.

It was Pep Guardiola and his side who were triumphant on the pitch, winning the treble including the league ahead of the Gunners, but Mikel Arteta has managed to convince Declan Rice to move to north London instead of the northwest after leaving West Ham where he was captain.

We’ll likely see both clubs at least in the mix for major honours much later on this season, but the first meeting could be a far more open affair with minutes on the pitch and honing of tactics more important than the trophy on offer.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the match.

Pep Guardiola’s intended audience may have been in Barcelona. It often has been, though usually when he was their midfielder, captain or manager. In seven years in Manchester, Guardiola has frequently had to address matters at the Camp Nou, though it was usually only to deny that Lionel Messi was bound for the Etihad Stadium.

Now the subject of another saga is a player from his present, not the increasingly distant past. Manchester City’s summers seem to consist of two rituals: lifting the Premier League trophy and then enduring a wait to see if Bernardo Silva stays. The Portuguese’s most persistent admirers are in Catalonia. The other constant is that Barcelona repeatedly refuse to meet City’s asking price. Sometimes they receive no firm proposal while a cash-strapped club with a recruitment policy based on hoping their allure will encourage players to engineer their exit seemingly think they can acquire elite footballers on the cheap.