Chelsea's Community Shield win means little, claims Cole

Jose Mourinho's side gained a 2-1 victory over Arsenal at the Millennium Stadium as the Gunners found themselves out-muscled in the curtain-raiser to the Premiership season.

The rivals will meet for a second time in two weeks at Stamford Bridge on 21 August and Cole, who last month signed a new contract keeping him at Highbury until 2008, said: "It will be totally different. This was the Community Shield and in two weeks it's the league."

"I think some people might say that the Community Shield matters but we won it last season and we lost the league. So we're not going to think too deeply about it - it's over now."

Chelsea drew stinging criticism from Arsène Wenger for time-wasting and using long-ball tactics with the Arsenal manager insisting their approach failed to match the spirit of the occasion.

Cole supported his manager by highlighting the Premiership champions' safety-first policy and the 24-year-old England left-back rubbished Mourinho's belief that Chelsea are a stronger outfit this time around.

"I think Chelsea are just the same. They've had a good pre-season but when they put 10 men behind the ball, it's going to be hard to break them down," he said.

"It's hard to break any team down when they do that. But it was a good test for us. Chelsea are a good team and they've got a lot of good players."