Same old story?

IN many ways, as a curtain raiser, the Community Shield was the least enthralling appetiser for the new season we have had for years.

It was rather a case of the same old same old, as the two super powers of the English game slugged it out much as they have over the past half dozen years. Boxing and coxing, to-ing and fro-ing, the power ebbing and swaying before Manchester United ultimately triumphed: the story of the 2002-3 season shoe-horned into one very hot, bad-tempered 100 minutes of action.

Give or take the odd tinkering at the periphery, neither team had anything interesting or new to show off. The best they could manage between them was Arsenal's new change kit. And that was retro-modelled on a style worn in the seventies.