Hello reader,

Yep, it’s the day before the new season. The day before the inevitable rollercoaster season of entertainment, joy, frustration and disgust. Hopefully, this time, it’ll be more of the former. We’re excited, are you?

Today was an unusual “football season eve”. We’ve signed someone. And no, it wasn’t the much talked about “20+ goals a season striker” or Lua-Lua. No, it was Casper Ankergren, the ex-Leeds keeper. Now, this could prove a pivotal bit of business. While you’ve got to feel sorry for Poke, Poyet has at least held up his hands and accepted that, for the moment at least, he’s signed a keeper who isn’t good enough for a team with play-off aspirations. And in the absence of Brezovan, you don’t get much better than signing a keeper who has just won promotion at this level. We just hope he manages to gel with the backline quickly, as El-abd and Elphick aren’t exactly renowned for their strong openings to seasons. Last year, we faffed around with Smith, who plainly wasn’t good enough. Fortunately, we appear to have avoided a repeat of this. And with our track record of having keepers injured/banned, to have two excellent keepers will only be good for the season ahead.

This season promises to be a belter. But then again so did last season under Russell. And the season before under Mickey. So we need to be cautious about this campaign under Gus and Tano. We’ve made some sensible signings (Sparrow, Greer, Barnes) and some exciting ones (Baz, Battipiedi), but until we sign the forward and left wingers then realistically all we can hope for is the play-offs. We all want to be in The Championship at Falmer, but it’s not neccessarily that straight forward. Some of you might think that a little negative, but we are of the view that the 40% or so on NSC who think “we’re going up” are making that prediction based on Gus bringing in those extra players before the end of August. Without them, we’re a strong tream, but not a particularly intimidating one.

Southampton are obvious favourites for the title, but be aware of Sheffield Wedneday, who have made some quality purchases, alongside Huddersfield, Charlton, and Swindon, who all had good years last time round. Don’t write off Plymouth, Rochdale and Peterborough either. Posh in particular should be looking to give Southampton a run for their (lots of!) money.

Tomorrow, we take on one of those sides who performed well last season, Swindon, at the County Ground. They’ve lost Billy Paynter and Greer, but with the threat of Austin up front they should still be a force. If we lose, then expect to here comparisons with Norwich last year, who got tonken on day one, and went on to tear up the division. And without Greer and Murray, it’s not that unlikely that we’ll get beaten. But if the back four can find the form they showed at the end of last season, then there’s always a chance, especially if Barnes can get back to the form of his loan spell that he didn’t really show pre-season.

All the while we haven’t got a striker, it looks as though there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the shoulders of Glenn Murray this year. It’s just a shame he can’t play on Saturday. Everyone seems to be cautiously optimistic about him; he’s looked sharp in pre-season and a lot of people (us included) believe if he stays fit and free of suspension, then it could be a great season for him. And a good season for Glenn Murray could mean a great one for Brighton & Hove Albion. Equally though, none of us would be surprised if he keeps up his petulance and spends a quarter of the season on the sideline. Here’s hoping it’s not the latter.

Navarro has been talked about much this summer too, and it’ll be fascinating to see how he performs, after the praise from Steve Bruce in Portugal, and after he’s impressively won over the Albion crowd to become one of our key men.

We’ll be at the match tomorrow, hopefully following the game on our increasingly popular Twitter. If you see us at the game, give us a shout! And if you’re not there, give us a tweet!

Here’s to a good season!

The We Are Brighton team.