Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka were both absent from Arsenal\u2019s starting XI for the Community Shield meeting with Manchester City, a decision that reflected timing more than surprise.<\/p>\n
Both players had only returned to training on Tuesday after starting for England in the third-place playoff against France in Miami 29 days earlier. Neither had appeared in any of Arsenal\u2019s pre-season friendlies before Sunday, so their omission fitted a cautious approach from Mikel Arteta rather than any fresh drama.<\/p>\n
The pair had also dealt with fitness issues during the World Cup, something that drew public criticism from Thomas Tuchel. With another demanding season ahead across four competitions, a gradual return to action looks to suit both players, and Arsenal\u2019s strength in depth meant their absence did not dramatically alter the shape of the side.<\/p>\n
Arteta was already upbeat about another summer addition after Bruno Guimar\u00e3es made his unofficial Arsenal debut in the midweek friendly draw with Como. \u201cYou sensed immediately a really strong connection and a player that is going to make us better without a doubt,\u201d the Basque boss beamed.<\/p>\n
That confidence carried into Guimar\u00e3es\u2019s semi-competitive debut against City, a club that had long admired him. The $101 million summer recruit came into a fixture against Arsenal\u2019s closest title challengers and last season\u2019s FA Cup winners with a record that made for mixed reading. He had been part of the Lyon side that eliminated City from the Champions League quarterfinal in 2020, but he also lost seven of 11 meetings with them while at Newcastle United.<\/p>\n
Guimar\u00e3es has previously been candid about how difficult he finds the matchup. \u201cIt\u2019s the worst game,\u201d Guimar\u00e3es has previously lamented of playing against City. \u201cI hate it. It feels like we\u2019re all children and they\u2019re professionals. It\u2019s horrible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like they\u2019re playing with 15 players, and we\u2019re playing with seven. You look and say, \u2018Wow, there are so many blue guys.\u2019 It\u2019s unbelievable. And they\u2019re all crazy good. Sometimes we talk, the coach asks: \u2018Press the right side, the left side\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rice and Saka were left out as Arsenal managed fitness and gave Guimar\u00e3es a major start against City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238],"tags":[242,180,1980],"class_list":["post-18518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","tag-injury","tag-player-news","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}