Should the Community Shield Be Considered a Major Honour?

The Community Shield. The traditional annual curtain-raiser for the new Premier League season. The league champions face the winners of the FA Cup at Wembley Stadium for the chance to win that prestigious over-sized dinner plate. But, how prestigious is it, really? This has been a grey area discussed by many football fans every year. Reactions to a team winning the Shield usually seem to range from "They're going to win the league this season!" to "Yeah, they won a mickey mouse cup, it doesn't matter!". Now, my team, Arsenal, have won the Shield twice in a row now, as you all know, and I heard both sides of that reaction spectrum in my local after the final whistle was blown. While it pleased me to get one over Chelsea (especially Mourinho) and see my team looking sharp ahead of the new season, my mind always casts itself back to last year, when we beat Man City 3-0 to win the same prize, and then went on to finish 3rd while Man City finished above us in 2nd. Hence, that game did not foreshadow how the season would go, as some people sometimes believe. The point is, I as a Gooner am not getting carried away too much with winning the Shield, as I see the Community Shield as little more than a preseason trophy, like our Emirates Cup and the Barclays Asia Trophy. I do, however, feel that it is a fitting way to kickoff the new season and give the two teams a final dress rehearsal before the season begins.

So, what do you think?

it's an oversized 20p coin.

Hahahaha. Absolute desperation. Face it, the charity shield is just a pre-season friendly with no value whatsoever. It has no prestige, it's an oversized 20p coin.

It has more value then these pre-season "trophies" such as Emirates Cup which are just pointless friendlies with no standing.

To play in the Community Shield, there is a pre-requisite to qualify (i.e. win the league and FA Cup) so there's some prestige to it. Wouldn't put it on par with League Cup or FA Cup and obviously nowhere near a real trophy like League title or CL trophy.

"It's just a friendly!"

Like Mourinho put it, it's more important that a regular friendly, but less important than a proper league match, I find it ridiculous that anyone would try and take anything from it like some people are doing so, there was a stat I heard yesterday about the number of teams that won the Community Shield who went on to win the PL, it wasn't many if I recall and needless to say winning it last year didn't do much for Arsenal in terms of a title challenge did it.

Like friendlies, it's simply 'nice' to win it, no more, both teams will be straight on to focussing on the weekend now and forgetting about it.

Basically the team that wins it is in a lose-lose situation. You can't even celebrate it because it's 'not a real trophy' & if you do then you're a fickle fan. Ridiculous, it's still a trophy and you can bet anything every single team to contest it will want to win it.

You just know if Chelsea won it the Bell End would be wumming the **** out of the Arsenal thread about how Wenger is a specialist in failure who can't even win a nothing trophy.

I congratulated them and still wummed them even when we lost.

Point still stands that you're infatuated with us mate.

To be honest the fact that to win it you need to first win a major trophy makes me wonder if it should. Its the fact it is pre season that it isn't classed as one. If it were played at the end of last season instead of the beginning of this one it may be seen differently IMO.

Basically the team that wins it is in a lose-lose situation. You can't even celebrate it because it's 'not a real trophy' & if you do then you're a fickle fan. Ridiculous, it's still a trophy and you can bet anything every single team to contest it will want to win it.