Arsenal v Manchester City in Community Shield and athletics gold – follow with us

Jarrod Bowen will be in action when West Ham open their Championship campaign at Burnley; Arsenal and Manchester take their Premier League rivalry to Cardiff; Amy Hunt will be looking to add to her gold medal haul in Birmingham. Composite: Guardian Design; Shutterstock; Tom Jenkins/The Guardian; AP

Arsenal v Manchester City in Community Shield and athletics gold – follow with us

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

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Saturday

8am (all times BST)Matchday live

Long gone are the days of an August football big bang, with all the major men’s leagues starting at 3pm on the Saturday after the Charity Shield. But in the wake of Scotland, the Carabao Cup and the National League (not forgetting assorted European qualifiers and the Super Cup), the venerable Football League itself is back – and with it Matchday live. Emillia Hawkins will look at the fallout from Friday night’s Wolves v Blackburn Championship opener (a repeat of the 1960 FA Cup final for even older nostalgia fans) and all the buildup to the rest of the programme. A Bolton v Preston derby kicks off the day’s second-tier programme, alongside League One and League Two games, though the bulk of matches kick off at the sacred hour of three o’clock. Oh, and she will also have all the latest transfer news and gossip across the men’s and women’s games. Send your thoughts to matchday.live@theguardian.com

1.30pmFootball League clockwatch

Football, and lots of it. The pick of the Championship matches is perhaps Middlesbrough v Lincoln: a side who just missed a return to the promised land hosting one that got there. Imps fans have not seen fulfilment of the spring’s “Tottenham away, olé, olé” chant but, having not played at this level since 1961, they will hardly be complaining at facing a club who were in the Premier League in 2016-17, the season that City won promotion from the National League. Scott Murray will have news from the Riverside and all the other grounds, starting with the end of the lunchtime kick-offs, with Leicester’s second ever season in the third tier starting at playoff-winning Notts County among the early League One games.

6pmEuropean Athletics Championship

It’s the penultimate night at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham and there will be high home hopes for the men’s 100m relay at 9.33pm, after Romell Glave and Jeremiah Azu completed a British one-two in the individual event. A quarter of an hour later, Amy Hunt, the women’s double sprint gold medallist, will be targeting relay glory. Other British hopefuls include Amber Anning in the women’s 400m at 8.10pm and Jake Wightman in the men’s 1500m at 9.07pm. While Sean Ingle reports from the second city, Luke McLaughlin will guide you through the evening as it happens.

Amber Anning of Great Britain is hopeful of winning a medal in the women’s 400m final. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

Sunday

8amMatchday live

Emillia Hawkins will be back after her Saturday morning stint to pick through that day’s events and look forward to an afternoon of action that includes the traditional Wembley curtain raiser. To the surprise of some, the Community Shield is taking place in Cardiff – not because the FA forgot to book Wembley but, it seems, because four nights of concerts from the Weeknd were more lucrative. Email matchday.live@theguardian.com with your views on whether Arsenal v Manchester City in what is now a glorified friendly carries any real significance for the new season, and anything your spies can tell us about Watford v Southampton and Burnley v West Ham.

3pmCommunity Shield: Arsenal v Manchester City

The champions take on the FA Cup winners as usual, but at the Principality Stadium for the first time since 2006, when Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-1. Twelve months ago the Reds were also taking part but went down on penalties to Crystal Palace after a 2-2 Wembley draw in which they led twice and a shootout in which Mohamed Salah disappointed with the opening kick, a set of circumstances that did, in fact, prove a harbinger of what was to come (albeit for a side who were very much still coming to terms with the death of Diogo Jota). This year Arsenal and post-Pep Manchester City lock horns, with Rob Smyth on minute-by-minute duty, while Ben Fisher and Ed Aarons report from the Welsh capital.

4pmBurnley v West Ham

The Championship game of the weekend is deemed by Sky to be a claret-and-blue derby, and a first English league game for Burnley’s new manager, the Belgian Nicky Hayen, a much-travelled coach in his 12th role in 13 years. In the away dugout is Nuno Espírito Santo, who couldn’t quite keep West Ham up last season. After five years of Burnley yo-yoing between the top two divisions, Hayen will have his work cut out to engender much optimism in a support base that knows too much about false dawns, while the visitors are in turmoil over events in the boardroom as well as on the pitch. Tim de Lisle is on the blog, and Will Unwin reports from Lancashire.

Bashir Humphreys of Burnley in action against Notts County in the Carabao Cup first round. Photograph: Phil Oldham/Shutterstock

6pmEuropean Championships

It’s the last night of action in Birmingham and it could be a triumphant one for Britain, with a rack of relays. First up is the mixed 4x100m at 8.35pm, another chance for Britain’s individual champions to add to their earlier golds. In the men’s 4x4oom at 9.48pm, Britain has the individual champion in Matt Hudson-Smith, while Amber Anning should be the star of the women’s quartet 15 minutes earlier. Individually, Georgia Hunter Bell is in the women’s 1500m at 9.13pm, while Sweden’s pole vault showman Mondo Duplantis is in action from 7.30pm. Sean Ingle is report from Birmingham agains while Billy Munday has the live blog.