Manchester City have won the Community Shield for the first time since 1972 after a 3-2 victory against 10-man Chelsea at Villa Park.
Premier League champions City fell behind despite dominating on 40 minutes when Fernando Torres dinked the ball over reserve goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon after a skilful surge into the penalty area from Ramires.
However the Champions League winners were reduced to 10 men two minutes later after Branislav Ivanovic was red-carded for a high tackle on Aleksander Kolarov.
Referee Kevin Friend should have dished out a second yellow card to City's calamitous centre-back Stefan Savic 30 seconds earlier, yet bizarrely penalised Torres instead. Savic was substituted by manager Roberto Mancini at half-time to avoid evening up the contest.
Inevitably City took the initiative with the extra man advantage. Yaya Touré's classy equaliser from just inside the penalty area eight minutes after the restart was followed by a sumptuous strike from Carlos Tévez six minutes later to give City the lead.
Samir Nasri then doubled the advantage when he guided Kolarov's cross past the helpless Petr Čech to seemingly end the pre-season contest.
Yet Daniel Sturridge, a 74th minute substitute, had a low strike abysmally dealt with by Pantilimon, allowing fellow arrival Ryan Bertrand to score his first Chelsea goal to halve the lead with 10 minutes remaining.
Sergio Agüero missed a sitter to seal a City win in the 90th minute, but the league winners held on comfortably to win the shield in front of a paltry 36,394 at Aston Villa's ground.
2012 Community Shield
Everton confirmed prior to the match they had accepted an undisclosed bid from City for England midfielder Jack Rodwell. The 21-year-old was reported to be having a medical at Eastlands on Sunday, as he looks set to become the Mancunian club's first signing of the summer.