Welcome to Adeke Emmanuel's football blog

Premier League champions Manchester City
will be without eight players for today's Community Shield clash with Arsenal at
Wembley, the traditional curtain-raiser to the
English season.
Speaking at a news conference on Friday, manager Manuel
Pellegrini said captain Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta,
Fernandinho, Sergio Aguero, Martin Demichelis, Frank
Lampard and Bacary Sagna had only returned to training this
week after being given extended time off after the World Cup.
Spanish striker Alvaro Negredo had already been ruled out
with a broken foot.
"Frank Lampard is not ready to play," Chilean Pellegrini said.
"All the players that arrive this Monday, Demichelis. Vincent
Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Sagna, Fernandinho, Lampard and
Aguero, they have a special pre-season this week and next
week.
"Negredo has at least two or three months that he won't
play. He is coming to Carrington again and he is working on
different things."
Pellegrini said beating last season's FA Cup winners Arsenal
was important for setting the right tone for the defence of their
league title.
City suffered surprise defeats to Cardiff City and Aston Villa
early on last season, and while they eventually fought their
way to the Premier League summit, Pellegrini was keen to
avoid a similarly slow start.
"It is not a friendly match," he added.
"It is an important game against an important team in
Arsenal.
"Maybe both teams, Arsenal and our team, do not arrive in
our best moment because both have a lot of players who
have just arrived from the World Cup but I think it will be a
very good game and important for both teams to win it.
"We have to start from zero, we won the title last year but
now plenty of teams have the same option."
Arsenal will be without their three German World Cup winners
- Mesut Ozil, Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski.