Portsmouth could do with a break and maybe the depleted resources currenrtly at Sir Alex Ferguson’s disposal might be just that. There is an extra day’s recorvery time but on the other hand international duty can often acccount for more injuries. And if Dimitar Berbatov is still at Sours next week, then who scores the goals, especialy if Carlos Tevez’s return to Argentian for his mum’s funeral will keep him out or at best jet leagged. Joy for Harry.

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Bet Chelsea

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The influence of the great Luis Felipe Scolari on Chelsea was manifest in the opening minutes of the new season and as Portsmouth found out carried on through the full 90 minutes of glorious soccer. Nor was this a flash in the pan. Suddenly this team had been told what to do, just as they had when Jose Mourinho took over and in that first season had Damien Duff and Arjen Robben dancing down the wings.

Instruction one: Let the ball do the work. One touch and move. Be in place to support the man with the ball. Know the man will be in the space.

Instruction two: Hunt in packs so you can win back possession on the run and harass opponent’s attacks

Instruction three: Do not give the ball away by trying to dribble into opponents. Play into the space

Instruction four: If you are attacking you don’t need to defend

Instruction five: Use the wings

Item five was especially a weakness with Chelsea under both Mourinho and Grant, where tatacks arrived from an angle of 45 degrees at speed in the hope of wrong footing an opponent instead of making the byline and crossing from 90 degrees, the more so with a centreforwrad still to come back in Didier Drogba.

This was a stunning victory and achieved without Drogba, Michael Essien and Michal Ballack who went off early, who many might say are Chelsea’s three best players

Carlos Tevez holds the Community Shield up for fans. The best we can say is that at least Tevez deserved something on the day on which 0-0 hardly lit up expectations for the new season and a decision that went down to some poor penalties from Portsmouth. Manchester United looked good and well oiled but lacked the cutting edge that the injured Cristiano Ronaldo and the sickly Wayne Rooney offer. They may be fortunate that they have a slow start to the season with only two games in August and three in September thanks to internationals and the Super Cup against Uefa Cup winners Zenit St Petersburg in Monaco, another piece of debatable show boating to fund the coffers of soccer’s overbloated bureaucracy.

Bet Chelsea

If training ground action is anything to go by then Big Phil Scolari is about to unleash a real shock on Sunday against Portsmouth…John Terry in goal. That is where he is playing at Stamford Bridge this morning.

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Bracewell’s soccer betting laws 2 - how much to bet?

Money is relative. If you have a £1,000,000 going spare then putting it on Manchester United to beat Portsmouth in the Community Shield at the resplendent new Wembley might seem like a surefire bet. You could trouser £600,000 which is good money in most people’s language. But if you pop £1 on it £1.60 seems a bit like slim pickings.

How much to bet is firstly about how much can you afford to play with? This is a decision best taken for the long term. Set a budget and stick to it. Apart from anything else it allows us to construct realistic strategies and analyse them. If you keep popping bets on here and there in the heat of the moment, then you may never know whether it was luck, judgement or chance. With a budget we can mix up hisk high odds bets against bankers at low risk and manage our portfolio just like they are stocks and shares.

Poker players talk about have a stash which they can build up over a period of months for big games. That makes sense, except in soccer betting there is no need to keep doubling up the ante. You are probably not going to win millions unless you bet millions. Be realistic.

Let us set a budget of £10 a week, £100 if you could afford it and if you are flush then £1000. So we are all talking the same percentages. Let us work to turn that £10/£100/£1000 firstly into £25/£250/£2500. It may sound modestly ambitious, but even if we hit the big odds pay days, let’s treat them like they are as sunny days in February

A tip for the weekend - a treble on Arsenal, Milan and Real Madrid all to win is 7.20, so £10 = £72.

Open an account at BetClick and as a new member your first £10 bet is free - if it does not come off, you don’t lose anything. Give it a try, you could be holding folding Sunday night