Arsenal began the 2026\/27 campaign with a commanding statement, beating Manchester City 3-0 to lift the Community Shield on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The contest was effectively put into Arsenal\u2019s hands almost immediately. After only 24 seconds, Myles Lewis-Skelly found Riccardo Calafiori with a superb pass, and the forward finished clinically from close range to give his side the ideal start.<\/p>\n
That early breakthrough framed a first half in which Arsenal looked sharper and more settled, even without Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, both absent for fitness reasons. City had more of the ball but offered little with it, and their struggle to make chances was punished again in the 28th minute.<\/p>\n
This time, Kai Havertz rose to meet a delivery and headed beyond Gianluigi Donnarumma to double the lead. The assist came from debutant Christos Tzolis, who impressed with a composed and energetic display at both ends of the pitch.<\/p>\n
City did not force a meaningful opening until the 40th minute, and even then Ben White had to produce an excellent block to stop J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku from reducing the deficit before the interval.<\/p>\n
Any hope of a response was removed three minutes after the restart. Martin \u00d8degaard showed remarkable calm to sit Donnarumma down before finishing into an unguarded net, leaving Arsenal in full control at 3-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you Tottenham in disguise?\u201d the Arsenal fans sang as the celebrations started early. Maresca then turned to his bench, bringing on Jack Grealish and removing Erling Haaland after 53 minutes.<\/p>\n
The changes made little difference. Arsenal remained in command throughout the second half and saw out a polished victory to claim the season\u2019s first silverware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal beat Manchester City 3-0 to win the 2026 Community Shield in a dominant display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,2022],"tags":[59,1980],"class_list":["post-18526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-community-shield","tag-featured","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526","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=18526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}