The match will be at the Millennium stadium on Sunday 11th August (kick-off 2pm). There are no ticket details available as yet, keep an eye on Arsenal.com for them.

There seems to be a consensus that winning the Charity Shield is a bad omen. But we needn't worry about that cos it's not the Charity Shield anymore.

Mysteriously, the FA in their wisdom have decided to change the name of the match from "Charity Shield" to "Community Shield". If anyone can find the reason in this FA page I'd be interested to hear about it. It certainly doesn't seem to mention any changes other than the name.

All I can find is guff like, "we will be making the Shield work harder for us at all levels of the game around the country, bridging the gap between the people and players that are involved in the game at national level right the way up to those involved and playing in the professional game." and "We will be using the power of football".

No doubt next year it'll be something like "The FA Community Chest sponsored by Waddingtons".

By the way, before anyone gets all excited about the coin toss for dressing rooms... it's worth noting that the jinx was broken in the play-off finals last week.

Arsenal's regular pre-season friendly against Barnet at Underhill will be on Tuesday 6th August. The match is part of the deal which gets use of the pitch for the Arsenal reserves' home games.

Rupe adds...
Ian Eiloart brings our attention to an article on Soccernet, which suggests that the idea of rebranding to "community shield" is to allow the FA to send some of the proceeds in directiosn that aren't strictly "charitable". The Charity commission will no longer be able to have a say in where the proceeds go. In particular, the FA Spokesman says that in addition to charitable causes, "we want to see individuals who are some of the game's real heroes receive recognition for their great work."

At a time when players such as Tony Adams are being applauded for donating large parts of their testimonial reciepts to charity, this does seem to be a rather "unfortunate" development.