This is just a short piece warning next season's participants of the potential fate that shall befall them should they not take the charity shield seriously.

The facts that I am about to lay before the jury came to my attention when a flatmate and Man Utd fan pointed out how upbeat he was despite his side's capitulation to Arsenal in the said Community Trophy. He pointed out that Man Utd hardly ever lost the league when they lost the Charity shield and conversely, when they won it, they usually lost the league.

I decided to find out if my glory-hunting friend was right, and so looked up the winners of the Charity Shield and the teams who then went on to win the Premiership. The stats made you think (or at least they did if you were sat at work on a Saturday afternoon waiting for the results to come in so you could write up your reports).

Here is the mocked up table:

Year        Charity Shield Winner         Premiership Winner

03/04              Man Utd                           Arsenal

02/03               Arsenal                           Man Utd

01/02              Liverpool                          Arsenal

00/01              Chelsea                          Man Utd

99/00              Arsenal                           Man Utd

98/99              Arsenal                           Man Utd

97/98              Man Utd                          Arsenal

96/97             Newcastle                        Man Utd

95/96              Everton                           Man Utd

94/95              Man Utd                         Blackburn

So in the last ten years a team has never, repeat, never won the Charity Shield and gone on to win the league. In fact in the history of the Premiership, only Man Utd have done it, in the 93/94 season. It has become so difficult to achieve both trophies that maybe they should make it an official competition, count it as a major trophy - I mean, no-one's gonna win the double with it are they? Certainly not this season, Arsenal may have romped home with it back in August, but they're well out of the title race now.

So, is this all mere coincidence or is there something behind it all? You could say that winning the trophy pits too much expectation on a team too early in the season. You could say that as it's nearly always between two big clubs, fans and the media will be thinking "Well if they can beat them, they can beat anyone". You could say that psychologically, the winning team will think they've got one trophy under their belts, no need to worry too much about the other four.

You could say all of this...but you'd be kidding yourself. No-one takes the Charity Shield seriously enough for it too affect their season, not the teams in it, not the managers, not the media and not the fans.

But they should.

Because although there is no relation between the two facts, superstitions DO affect teams. If a team goes into the match thinking "if we win this, we'll lose the league." and then they DO win it, somewhere in the back of their mind they're going to be resigned to defeat in the league.

So managers should take the game seriously. They should hype it up, focus all their training on it, put their worst team out and try their very best to lose the Charity Shield. It's the only way forward.