KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: The FA Community Shield, which kicks off the new season at Wembley, is an exercise in public relations. For the winners it offers a positive signal about the season ahead, for the losers it can be dismissed as merely a useful fitness test.

The format of league champions against FA Cup winners was adopted in 1930 and has been maintained, with occasional exceptions, ever since. Scheduling was set at the start of the season from 1959 and Wembley has been its usual home since 1974, apart from the stadium redevelopment years.

Extra spice this year is the set-up as a repeat of the Manchester derby which saw United beat City 2:1 in last season’s FA Cup Final. Victory was crucial for United and manager Eric ten Hag: it qualified them for the Europa League which their eighth place in the league had not.

Victory even helped keep the Dutchman in his job at a time when new part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe was considering replacing him with Mauricio Pochettino or Thomas Tuchel.

United are Community Shield record holders with 17 wins and four shared which provides them with, at least, a historic advantage over City who boast six wins including only two in the Pep Guardiola era in 2018 and 2019.

If victory is important in PR terms then Saturday matters more for Ten Hag and United. Ratcliffe’s doubts about Ten Hag are clear and he has not provided serious transfer market support. So far this summer United have spent a comparatively minimal £37m on Dutch Euro forward Joshua Zirkzee from Bologna and £52m on French defender Leny Yoro.

Unfortunately fans will have to wait three months to see whether Yoro can be the ‘new Varane’. The teenager needed surgery after injuring a foot in a 3:1 defeat by Arsenal in Los Angeles on tour last month. Zirkzee may play on Saturday but an assessment of his prospective partnership with Ramus Hojlund will have to wait. Hojlund was another casualty of the Arsenal defeat. A hamstring injury has sidelined him for six weeks.

Jadon Sancho is almost certain to start the new season where he ended it: at Wembley where he was a Champions League loser with Dortmund against Real Madrid. Ten Hag said: “We won’t have the availability of Rasmus and Joshua is not so long in training and has to adapt to our way of playing. There is also the option for us of Jadon as a striker. We know he can play in wide areas but also as a false striker, he’s an option.”

Luke Shaw and Kobbie Mainoo returned to training on Monday after helping England reach the Euro final and may appear as substitutes ahead of starting in United’s Premier opener at home to Fulham next Friday.

City, given all United’s problems, should be favourites on Saturday to make amends for last season’s Community Shield defeat on penalties to Arsenal.

Stefan Ortega will be in goal, as City’s designated ‘cup keeper’. City have all their Euro stars back in training and available but Guardiola may start most on the substitutes’ bench. On tour in the US he used Rico Lewis at right-back with Kalvin Phillips in central defence alongside Josko Gvardiol. In attack Erling Haaland played all the tour matches after a football-free summer and scored a hat-trick in last weekend’s 4:2 defeat of Chelsea.

Haaland’s form and fitness will be all the more important for City with the likely £85m sale of Julian Alvarez to Atletico Madrid.

Alvarez scored 36 goals in 103 appearances for City but 41 of those were as a substitute. He had become frustrated at the lack of regular starts. The Argentinian World Cup winner did not start either of the Champions League quarter-final ties against Real Madrid or the FA Cup final or the last three matches of the Premier League run-in.

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