Community Shield By The Numbers

Introduction

The FA Community Shield is known as the final warm-up act for any pre-season. With the winners of the previous Premier League season going up against the same campaign’s winner of the FA Cup, the first piece of silverware for the next nine-month cycle is up for grabs.

Whether it is a major trophy or not is often argued, and the viewpoint depends on whether success has been achieved. To those supporters or even managers who have overseen the lifting of the shield, it is considered a major trophy; the opposite is true if you are on the losing end.

Whatever the status of this curtain raiser, it certainly goes a large way to filling the football appetite of supporters who have gone hungry across the course of the summer, and for the Manchester pair of City and United, it is they that will meet at Wembley for the 2024/25 seasons starting edition.

The blue half of the city represents the Premier League as winners once again, while the red half of the city earns an invite to Wembley by virtue of winning the FA Cup just a couple of months ago—beating Pep Guardiola’s Cityzens in the process.

The History Makers

However, it is not just the 2024 edition that is of interest at OLBG towers, it is the history of the competition in both its Charity and Community Shield guises and the best way to begin our trawl through history is to see who the most successful club in this pre-season clash has been:

As you can see, Manchester United are top of the shop with 21 shield wins, but you will also notice that only 17 of them have been outright—the other four were shared in the days when no tiebreaker was in place for a drawn fixture.

In days gone by, a drawn Charity Shield match saw both clubs claim possession of the silverware for six months of the following year each. Now, though, penalties ensure a definite winner and loser on the day.

The Red Devils top of the shop with 21 overall wins and the chance to make it 22 in just a few days, followed by Arsenal with 17 wins (16 outright and one shared) and the Gunners are subsequently one better off than Liverpool with 16 (11 outright and five shared).

The Premier League Era

With the previously-names Charity Shield beginning in 1908, there is more than 100 years of history to look back on but Manchester United’s win in its first year does not have the same weight as that of Arsenal’s in 2023. With that in mind, we will now look at the games contested in the Premier League era.

One thing you will notice is that there are no shared winners from 1992 onwards and the cluster of winning teams is far smaller than looking at the overall list of winning clubs (not to be unexpected with just over 30 years of sample data).

However, we can also drill down and see which clubs have been the most successful in the Charity/Community Shield in the Premier League era:

Since the inception of the Premier League, eight clubs have lifted this first piece of season silverware, and of those eight, it is Manchester United that rule the roost with 11 wins since 1992 – two better than Arsenal in second with nine.

It will come as no great surprise that these two clubs are the most successful of all time and in the Premier League era alone, and it will come as no great surprise that three other members of the ‘big six’ are the next three clubs on the list.

All members of the ‘Premier League big six’—Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City—have three wins each—a tally that could change for the latter by the end of the week. From there, Everton, Leeds, and Leicester are the remaining teams to have lifted the shield since 1992.

League Or Cup

Now we know the winners of the shield since 1992, the big question is whether we can derive any key insights from the 32 matches that have taken place and the answer is yes we can, with a good starting point being the analysis of league winners and their performance in this game.

A Cup team can also be a team that finished second in the Premier League the following season and earned an invite to the Charity/Community Shield by virtue of the corresponding league winners winning the double/treble.

Here we can see that it is the league winners who have just generated more success than the team representing the cup. Of the 32 matches played from 1992 to 2023, it is 17 wins for the league representative and 15 for the cup winner or league runner up.

Not a resounding run of success for the league winners. That arguably gives Manchester United hope before they return to Wembley this Saturday – especially as they will have a point to prove against their nearest neighbours.

With it being so close in terms of success for and against the league winners of the previous season, it does suggest as to why it is so close in terms of numbers. Do the league winners take it seriously – the majority of wins would say yes, but perhaps the team they play against has more to prove.

Of course, you can be a double or even treble-winner coming into this game. Although winning the treble does not make too much of a difference in the landscape of this one-off fixture, both Manchester United and Manchester City had that mantle in the 1999 and 2023 editions, respectively.

In addition to these two treble wins, there have been five more double winners since the beginning of the Premier League era and we have also analysed how they have performed in the Charity/Community Shield game that followed:

Of the seven double (or treble) winners, four of them have then gone on to win lift the Charity/Community Shield just a few months later, the three other occasions has seen the non-league winner come out on top.

Over Or Under

Once again, there is not much difference between the two metrics as the league winners reign supreme again (albeit just). But how do each of these 32 matches translate into total goals scored, especially from an over/under 2.5 goals point of view?

Here we can see that 17 of the 32 matches have finished with two or fewer goals after 90 minutes of competitive action, just edging out the 15 that have finished with three or more if a reason as to why fewer goals are scored, it could be one of two:

1) Still a friendly for all intents and purposes, so intensity is not going to be at its maximum

2) The August heat may also play a factor in a lack of hitting top gear in terms of attacking prowess

Add to this managers' taking the opportunity to try out new players and new systems, and you can understand why this particular fixture is perhaps not as enthralling as the FA Cup final nine months later.

Then again, it is still a fixture that teams want to win, and if you can come out on top, it can also serve as the perfect launchpad for the season ahead. Of the 32 matches in this data sample, only eight winners went on to win the Premier League the following May.

Therefore, the upcoming result, whatever it turns out to be, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Methodology

Data taken from: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FA_Community_Shield

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_champions

Correct as of 5th August 2024.