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Chelsea and Manchester United meet at Wembley on Sunday for the FA Community Shield. Last year’s winners, Chelsea went on to win the Premiership and the FA Cup, while United had to be content with just the Carling Cup.
The FA Community Shield gives a good look at how the teams will line up in the upcoming Premiership season and is a chance of an early piece of silverware for each team before the season even properly starts.
The Community Shield is normally contested between the winner of the Premier League and the FA Cup. However because Chelsea won both those competitions, the next eligible team are Manchester United, who came runners up in the Premiership.
There haven’t been many changes to the teams over the summer. Chelsea have released Ballack, Deco and Belletti, while bringing in Yossi Benayoun from Liverpool. Manchester United have not sold any players, but strengthened their squad with the signings of Chris Smalling from Fulham and Mexican international Javier Hernandez.
So far in pre-season United have looked a lot more solid than Chelsea, who have won only 2 of 5 games. United come off the back of a 7-1 win over the League of Ireland XI side although are still the bookies underdogs in the game on Sunday.
Those looking at football betting can back Chelsea at 2.5 or Manchester United at 3.0, with a draw priced at around 3.3.
