Kick-off...

This is my nephew, Gabriel - the newest member of my own personal Gunners fan club, consisting of myself, my son and my three nephews.

Tomorrow is the big day.

I'll be there, watching a 7:30 AM pirate broadcast on my laptop because the match isn't televised.

Arsenal, one of twenty teams who are aiming for the Premier League title.

They'll each play each other twice, once home and once away - thirty-eight matches lasting until May of 2009.

Thirty-eight matches and we're already grappling with a thin squad and key injuries - my hope is we get the bumps and bruises out of the way early and pick up steam as we go.

In other words, the opposite of last year.

Hoping Fabregas is just taking it easy right now and Van Persie stays healthy...

and Rosicky and Eduardo are able to return to form after looong injury spells...

and we pick up that one experienced midfield signing we're presently missing...

and the rest of the team avoids injury...

and Ade bags more goals than he misses...

and Nasri is the next Zidane...

Pause to catch my breath...

We looked like crap from what I saw of the Twente match, but we won and really that's the point so I'll take it.

Just shaking off the rust and we can only get better - right?

I caught some of our end of the season match against Man U the other night on Fox and I was reminded that despite an awful stretch where we lost all hopes of winning silverware, we ended the season with a lot of fight left.

Inspiring.

Here's to a new season...

Here's to Arsenal.