We’ve got a lot of match reportage to get through from the final weekend of pre-season football, starting with the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) takeaways from the Community Shield.
We’ll have the goals, assists, injury updates and team news information from Saturday’s warm-up matches involving Premier League clubs in two more Scout Notes articles to follow later.
And don’t forget to check out our comprehensive pre-season page for more information on the action taking place ahead of Gameweek 1.
But first, what we saw at Wembley: Jack Grealish‘s (£8.0m) City debut, the Leicester City striker situation, a £4.0m defender and an ‘out of position’ midfielder up front for Pep Guardiola’s defeated troops.
Premium Members can also get Opta player and team data from the Community Shield via this link.
MANCHESTER CITY 0-1 LEICESTER CITY
- Goal: Kelechi Iheanacho (£7.5m)
- Assist: None
An 89th-minute Kelechi Iheanacho (£7.5m) penalty settled the 99th staging of the Community Shield.
The mid-price forward came off the bench to notch the late spot-kick after being felled by Nathan Ake (£5.0m)
An entertaining, fairly even affair at Wembley was reflected in the underlying numbers: Guardiola’s troops edged the shot count 12-10 and the non-penalty expected goal (xG) score by 1.08-0.98.
GREALISH’S CITY DEBUT
All eyes were on City’s left flank from the 65-minute mark of Saturday’s encounter, as Jack Grealish made his City bow as a substitute for teenager Samuel Edozie.
Save for an unlikely blitz of goals and assists in his quarter-game cameo, we weren’t going to make any conclusive calls on Grealish from an FPL perspective in this his first competitive appearance in the best part of a month.
Match-sharpness was the main order of the day, with Guardiola having said in his pre-match presser that the £100m winger was “not ready to start at all” following a belated return to pre-season training.
Grealish produced a couple of trademark drives from the left and one fleet-footed moment from a more central position, with his new manager impressed with the debut:
He was really good – aggressive, going against full-backs and every time he had the ball there were three players [around him]. We will know him and step by step he will find the best.
The players who played today will be better next Sunday. That is the process we have to do and these three games before the international break get as many points as possible to be there and week by week after the international break we start the Champions League and I’m pretty sure we will be better.
Of more interest was the position he took upon his introduction.
Questions have been raised over which role he will take up at the Etihad, with Grealish having played mostly as a drifting left-winger at Villa of late but having also previously expressed a preference for a deeper role in central midfield.
Here, he was used on the left of a front three in Guardiola’s tried-and-tested 4-3-3 – although the absence of Raheem Sterling (£11.0m) and Phil Foden (£8.0m) always made it likelier that his services would be needed further up the field than in the engine room.
Above: Grealish’s average position (above left) and heatmap (above right) on Saturday. Screenshots from the Fantasy Football Scout Premium Members Area.
£4.0M PLAYING LEICESTER DEFENDER?
With Wesley Fofana (£4.5m) and Jonny Evans (£5.5m) sidelined, Brendan Rodgers turned to Daniel Amartey (£4.0m) to partner Caglar Soyuncu (£5.0m) at the heart of the Leicester backline.
There’s nothing quite like a pre-season appearance for a £4.0m defender to drum up a bit of fervour in the Fantasy community and Amartey may very well be in line for a start in Gameweek 1 at the very least, having stood up to the test of an admittedly under-strength City.
Rodgers said of the Ghana international after full-time:
Whatever I have asked Daniel Amartey to do he has always done so with great commitment. His attitude is first class and he’s very much a team player. He was outstanding.
The versatile defender may well only be a short-term punt, however.
Evans could be back from Gameweek 4 based on Rodgers’ recent comments, while the Leicester boss said yesterday that the recruitment of a new centre-half was “something that we will have to look at”.
IHEANACHO OUT, BARNES IN?
While Community Shield line-ups aren’t always a reliable barometer of who will start in Gameweek 1, the fact that Rodgers has picked the same one-striker set-up in each of the last three games (also doing so against Villarreal and QPR) does not bode well for Kelechi Iheanacho.
Jamie Vardy (£10.5m) has ploughed a lone furrow up front in that trio of matches, with Iheanacho and summer signing Patson Daka (£7.5m) brought off the bench in each of them.
Instead, Ayoze Perez (£6.0m) and Harvey Barnes (£7.0m) now look in pole position to take to the field in Gameweek 1.
The pair have flanked Vardy in those three fixtures contested over the past week, with the pacy Barnes – who was on a run of 10 attacking returns in 11 fixtures before his Gameweek 26 injury last season – looking lively on his return.
‘OOP’ TORRES UP TOP
With Sergio Aguero now in Catalonia, Gabriel Jesus (£8.5m) only recently returning to training after Copa America involvement and Kevin De Bruyne (£12.0m) on the injury list, it was left to Ferran Torres (£7.0m) to spearhead the City attack at Wembley.
An ‘out of position’ asset is always a draw on paper in the FPL world and he may well be leading the line in Gameweek 1, given the alternatives who are short on game-time in pre-season.
The Spain international didn’t register a single shot or key pass in a quiet showing against Leicester, with the more involved Riyad Mahrez (£9.0m) – City’s form player of pre-season, for what it’s worth – blazing a succession of chances high and wide, including one opportunity in which he had breached Leicester’s backline.
Ilkay Gundogan (£7.5m) also got into some promising shooting positions, going close with one free-kick, but was ultimately as profligate as the Algerian.
LINE-UPS
Manchester City XI: Steffen, Cancelo, Ake, Dias, Mendy, Fernandinho, Gundogan (Rodrigo 65′), Palmer (Bernardo 74′), Mahrez, Edozie (Grealish 65′), Torres (Knight 74′).
Leicester City XI: Schmeichel, Ricardo, Amartey, Soyuncu, Bertrand (Thomas 78′), Ndidi, Tielemans (Soumare 70′), Perez (Albrighton 70′), Maddison (Dewsbury-Hall 70′), Barnes (Iheanacho 78′), Vardy (Daka 70′).
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