With due respect to the other 72 clubs, for many people the real season starts this weekend.

The excitement is not just in England because the Premier League games will be watched in just about every country in the world.

Obviously, that is why there is so much money circulating around with players coming from all over the world to play here and businessmen arriving to add to their investments.

I have said for a while that the league generally is split into 6-8-6.

The three promoted clubs are generally in the bottom six along with smaller clubs such as Bournemouth, Burnley and Brighton.

The top six are the obvious ones.

At one time I would have said it was 7-7-6 with Everton up there alongside fierce rivals Liverpool. I think this year they may re-join that area if the huge amount of money they have spent works for them.

Full marks to Norwich for getting promoted back to the top flight, but sadly their neighbours Ipswich watched them go up as they went down a league. It will be quite a while until that area has another derby match which everybody loves.

The Midlands are possibly looking more likely to have those with Villa re-joining Wolves and it could well be that this time next year West Brom are also up.

This was really the reason last week I mentioned Portsmouth, who are our fiercest rivals, and along with us, Bournemouth and Brighton it would be great for the area in general if all the teams were in the Premier League.

Apart from the fixtures against the top six which everyone wants to win, derby matches have always got that extra excitement and atmosphere.

So, what about Saints?

We all had a nail biting second half to last season and full marks to manager Ralph Hasenhuttl who turned up at a difficult time in December with games every few days.

He has now had time to take a deep breath and look at just about everyone in the squad bearing in mind he brought many youngsters into the first team.

Ralph has now enjoyed a full summer with pre-season games at home and abroad where results don’t always matter but they have been good and it has given him an opportunity to get his first team in his mind.

Up front I think the Adams signing has created some excitement but like all clubs Saints have to move players out to get players in and there haven’t been many exits.

One of the problems of course is that when players have been in the top flight for a while they get big contracts with good salaries which not everyone down below can afford.

Even when players have the chance to go to other clubs if they aren’t going to get the same sort of money they will turn the chance down.

I know many people talk about how rich these people are but they should remember it is a short term job. Not many are still playing or making that sort of money when they are over 30 and they have to carve out a life away from football.

No matter what, all of those things will be put on the backburner on Saturday.

Let’s hope for at least a draw with Burnley and then welcome one of the top teams in Europe at present, Liverpool, for our first home game.

  • To remind us how lucky we all are to be at the top level, take a look at some of the teams now trying to get back.

Sunderland, who in their first game last week had a crowd of 33,500, and Ipswich, would you believe, are in the third tier. Bobby Robson would not be too happy, bless him.