Joint-Chairman David Gold looks ahead to Saturday's visit of AFC Bournemouth
We return to the Boleyn Ground on Saturday to take on Bournemouth and everyone is keen to open our home account for the season.
Bournemouth are new to the Barclays Premier League, of course, and have made a tremendous rise over the past few years to reach the top flight. I watched their game against Liverpool on Monday night and although the result did not go their way, they showed they will not be overawed by any fixture in this division.
Our job is to bounce back from last weekend’s defeat to Leicester City and I think we saw enough in the second half of that game to suggest that we are well capable of claiming the three points and add to the victory we took at Arsenal on the opening day of the season.
With just over a week to the end of the summer transfer window, the speculation about who we will be bringing in is increasing.
The media speculation and questions all seem to come back to who we will be bringing in up front.. Elswhere in the squad, if you saw Pedro Obiang against Leicester you can see we have some real legs in midfield and what with Dimitri Payet, who is a proper player, along with Mark Noble, Cheik Kouyate and Kevin Nolan we are well equipped in that area.
You will always want more and you are never satisfied but for me if we bring in one more midfielder like an Alex Song and a striker then we would be well set.
As the negotiations to bring in those new players enter their final stages over the coming week, I would just like to pay tribute to my fellow Joint-Chairman David Sullivan, as people just do not know the work he puts in.
Lots of Chairmen go after signings but they don’t do the due diligence that David Sullivan does and that’s what makes him special. We have our advisors around us and Slaven will tell us the players we are looking for but actually buying them is easier said than done.
It’s not like going into a supermarket and picking up a striker from the shelves. It’s tremendously hard work and most of it fails because of a thousand different reasons but it’s that due diligence that lands great players like Dimitri Payet. I am sure his efforts will once again come good for us all.