A trip back to 1953 at Bloomfield Road, tricky ties for Fulham and Leicester, and plenty of minnows with eyes on a big scalp
The story of the 1953 Charity Shield wasn’t too dissimilar from the story of the 1953 FA Cup final. Stan Mortensen was on target for Blackpool, but his teammate Stanley Matthews ran off with the man-of-the-match plaudits. Yet the tale wasn’t an exact facsimile: despite the heroic efforts of the two Stans, Cup winners Blackpool lost the Shield to league champions Arsenal. The veteran Tommy Lawton was on the scoresheet for the Gunners that day, and, pass that crowbar please, the modern-day Arsenal have similar star strikers on which to call: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette, the increasingly impressive Alex Iwobi. Setting aside Aubameyang’s inexplicable hoick over the bar from a yard out at Anfield, and Arsenal’s continued travails at the back – no clean sheet in six – whoever gets the nod up front for the visitors should decisively make hay against hosts who have lost four of their last six and shipped two goals against non-league Solihull Moors in the last round. Will the Unai Emery era begin with FA Cup No 14? Or can the Seasiders reprise their recent performance at the Emirates in the League Cup – when they were a linesman’s flag away from completing a two-goal comeback – and give the Gunners something to worry about? SM
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