Jesus boost, dressing room celebrations - Behind the scenes of Arsenal’s win

Arsenal win the Community Shield and football.london has all the behind-the-scenes insight from a great day at Wembley Stadium

Arriving a couple of hours before kick-off, it was immediately apparent which set of supporters were going to be the vocal selection. Despite the boycott, there were still plenty of Man City supporters on Wembley way but the surroundings were filled with north London chants.

However, the most recent victory did indeed come at Wembley in 2020 when Arsenal earned a place in the FA Cup final with a 2-0 win. The difference that day was the lack of supporters and as Wembley began to fill, there was a sense that this was more than just a glorified pre-season fixture.

At kick-off, that was confirmed. The noise from the Arsenal fans was deafening and the Wembley acoustics allowed for the most hair-raising rendition of ‘North London Forever’. The City song of ‘Blue Moon’ was barely audible through the whistles from the red half of the stadium.

Mikel Arteta remained relatively calm in the first half. Pep Guardiola was the man strutting about the technical area whilst his former protégé watched on as his team performed to the degree that we’ve not seen in too many of these match-ups.

When Cole Palmer scored, although the City crowd made the loudest noise they’d make for the rest of the day, both myself and contemporaries around me began to type the all-too-familiar lines of a valiant Arsenal effort but just not enough; until…

Whilst fulfilling the duties of the minute-by-minute, watching Leandro Trossard see his shot deflected past Ortega there was an ‘as muted as possible’ fist-pump. Whilst typing though, there was a vibration to cope with as the Arsenal supporters celebrated wildly – if anything would confirm