Arsenal come into this Super Cup clash off the back of a frustrating 2-3 home defeat to Borussia Dortmund in the Emirates Cup. That result will sting, especially at the Emirates, where the Gunners usually make visitors feel the squeeze. But read it carefully — it was a pre-season friendly, a glorified workout, and Mikel Arteta will have learned more from that loss than from any routine win. The sharpness is there, the movement is there, but the defensive concentration slipped late on. That is fixable. That is exactly the kind of wake-up call you want before a trophy final.

Manchester City, on the other hand, arrive with no recent competitive data in the brief — no results, no stadium, no coach, no formation. That is a blank page, and in football, a blank page can mean two things: either they are quietly building under Pep Guardiola with a squad so settled they don't need a public dress rehearsal, or they are still in the lab, experimenting, and vulnerable to a team that has already played a high-intensity match. We lean towards the latter. City may be the reigning machine, but they are also a side that often starts seasons slowly, especially when their key midfielders have had a truncated pre-season.