Community Shield: Portsmouth And Manchester United

The 2008/09 football season got off to a fairly uneventful start this weekend with the Community Shield being won on penalties by Manchester United. However, while there were no goals and not a whole load of action, it was still an interesting game, not least because it played out just as both managers must have feared before kick-off. United dominated for most of the 90 minutes, but couldn't score due to a lack of strikers, while Pompey looked a long way from becoming a force in the top flight.

With Carlos Tevez playing in his usual role just behind the striker despite being up front pretty much on his own, United were always going to struggle to have the cutting edge that Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo could have given them if they'd been on the pitch instead of in the stands. But Sir Alex Ferguson could be happy with the slick football played by Tevez and the likes of Giggs, Scholes and Nani, which bodes well for when there's someone in front of them to put it in the net.

Indeed, if someone other than Darren Fletcher had slid in to try and stick the ball in the net from Nani's first half cross, United would have scored, but unfortunately Fletcher did an impression of someone playing a football video game and mistakenly pressing the 'slide tackle' button instead of the 'shoot' button. He went close in the second half too, as did Tevez, but both were denied by the agility of David James, who made 38 look like a young age for a footballer.

Of more concern for Harry Redknapp was the increasing exploitation of Sol Campbell's ageing limbs, something that United identified in their encounters last season and tried to utilise again yesterday.