How important is Community Shield to a team’s season?

August 16, 2026 No Comments

How important is Community Shield to a team’s season?Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Dean Henderson’s penalty shootout heroics helped Crystal Palace win the 2025 Community ShieldByEmlyn Begley, BBC Sport journalist and Chris Collinson, BBC football data analystPublished19 minutes agoThe Community Shield takes place between two teams who will be hoping to battle it out for the Premier League this season.English champions Arsenal take on runners-up and FA Cup winners Manchester City at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on Sunday. But do the stats suggest winning the curtain-raiser in the Welsh capital would indicate a successful season ahead? And what of the goalscorers?Why is the Community Shield being held in Wales?

21 July

Do Community Shield winners usually win the Premier League?

Considering the current Premier League champions play in the game every season it is surprisingly rare for the Community Shield winners to go on to win the league.

Since the Premier League started in 1992-93, only eight of the 34 winners of the Charity or Community Shield have done so.

Five of those happened in a six-year spell from 2005 until 2010.

Manchester City, in 2019, were the last team to do so – and before that it was Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 2011.

Only one of the past 15 winners of the Community Shield have gone on to become champions that season.

Since 1992 the teams who lose the Community Shield have won more league titles that season – 10 in total, including Manchester City for three years in a row between 2021 and 2023.

Last year Crystal Palace beat Liverpool and ended up finishing 15th, although they did go on to win the Conference League. The Reds also had a disappointing domestic campaign, finishing fifth.

Some 47% of the time (16/34) the upcoming season’s Premier League winners had not been involved in the Community Shield – like Arsenal in 2025-26.

And 53% of the time (18/34) the Shield winners have finished above the losers in the league that season.

On 10 occasions the two teams have finished as the top two in the Premier League – with four of those times being the Shield winners top and the losers as runners-up.

Do Premier League winners usually win Community Shield?

The other question is how many Community Shields are won by the previous season’s Premier League winners.

The answer is 18 out of 34 times – so 53%.

But in recent times it has become less frequent. Including Crystal Palace, the FA Cup winners have won eight of the past 12 Shields, something that had only happened five times in the previous 22.

And on three occasions in the Premier League era, neither the league nor cup winners have won it.

Arsenal (1999 and 2023) and Manchester United (2010) qualified as Premier League runners-up and beat the Double winners in the game.

Do Community Shield goalscorers go on to have good seasons?

Cole Palmer celebrates scoring for Manchester City in the 2023 Community Shield — Image caption,

Cole Palmer’s breakthrough season came after his 2023 Community Shield goal – albeit for a different club

This one is a bit of a mixed bag.

Crystal Palace’s 2025 scorers Jean-Philippe Mateta and Ismaila Sarr netted 37 goals between them last season.

Hugo Ekitike scored his first of 17 goals in his debut season for Liverpool – but Jeremie Frimpong did not enjoy a great first campaign after netting.

In 2023 Cole Palmer netted for Manchester City in their game against Arsenal (a match they would go on to lose on penalties after Leandro Trossard’s injury-time equaliser).

He would go on to score 22 Premier League goals and be named young player of the season… for Chelsea, having joined them for £42.5m.

The previous season, Darwin Nunez scored on his Liverpool debut – and Erling Haaland failed to notch on his City bow.

That led to post-match discussion about Nunez looking the better player.

However, Haaland went on to 52 goals that season, with Nunez netting only 15.

Kelechi Iheanacho only scored four Premier League goals after his 2021 Community Shield winner.

But back in 2019 Raheem Sterling’s Shield strike for City against former club Liverpool kick-started the most productive season of his career (31 goals).

A version of this article first appeared before the 2025 Community Shield