It’s that time again.

Perhaps the best time of the year.

The sun is shining. Holidays have been had. Pre-season is done. Football. Is. BACK.

Three months of constant refreshing the timeline, waiting for any potential transfer speculation to fill the void of watching our team is over.

The time has begun for our moods to constantly be dictated by 22 men running around a grass pitch kicking a ball. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As AFC Bournemouth fans, it is easy to have a sense of pessimism going into the new season. 4/5 of our backline have gone – Dean Huijsen to Real Madrid, Kepa to Arsenal (from Chelsea), Milos Kerkez to Liverpool, and Illia Zabarnyi to PSG, all confirmed before a ball has been kicked, for almost £150M. And with that, many from the outside believe it is going to be a tough season for Bournemouth, some even predicting a relegation fight, but this is not the first time we have been written off. Maybe it should just become a dictionary definition – ‘AFC Bournemouth – “to be written off”‘. Time and time again, supporters from other clubs, and sometimes even from within, push us aside in their predictions as we are nothing. But that will not be the case. Andoni Iraola’s AFC Bournemouth are here to surprise – again.

Players have gone – but players have come in as well. Players will always come and go, that is part and parcel of being an AFC Bournemouth supporter. In the summer of 2005, Burnley ripped apart the club by signing the trio of Wade Elliott, Gareth O’Connor and John Spicer – for a combined £50k. To fans of that time, this is nothing. There are countless more examples of fan favourite, key players going but then replaced by others. That’s how football works, and that is now the model of the AFCB recruitment team, similar to that of Brighton and Brentford. Sign young players for fees with good resale value, watch their value soar, and sign replacements to continue the cycle. Under the leadership of Tiago Pinto and Simon Francis, this has been a success so far, although there have been no mass exits under them like that has happened this summer. But that is where the replacements come in.

And these, on paper, are very good players. Djordje Petrovic replaces Kepa having been named Strasbourg’s player of the season, whilst finishing 7th and reaching the Conference league. He is a commanding presence in his area, and a fantastic shot stopper. His distribution may not be as good as Kepa’s, but his all-round game is on par, if not better. Bafode Diakite comes with a large sense of expectation, given the massive shoes he has to fill and the €40M fee it took to bring him here – the 2nd most expensive in the history of the club. But his game epitomises everything Andoni Iraola wants in a centre back, with stats showing a major part of his game is how comfortable he is on the ball, that composure to build from the back crucial for Iraola. He was in the upper percentiles of Ligue 1 for aerial duels won, how little he was dribbled past, clearances and shots blocked. He also carries a goal threat, scoring four times and grabbing an assist last season. Having watched him in pre-season, Andre Truffert is also the perfect player for Andoni’s system – not a like for like Milos Kerkez swap, he does not play football at a million miles an hour like the Serbian, but he loves to bomb forward, carrying great energy and threat. He’s a solid defender, too, and for a total of just £14M looks a very shrewd piece of business.

That doesn’t even mention the many vital cogs of the chaotic football machine that Iraola runs that didn’t leave. Going forward, the core remains. Justin Kluivert, Evanilson and Antoine Semenyo all hit double figures in the league last season, and despite rumblings of concrete interest in Kluivert and Semenyo, both have stayed, with the latter even committing his future to the club by signing a new contract in the summer. The heart of the team, the midfield, also remains. Ryan Christie won’t be back for the game against Liverpool, having had surgery at the latter stages of last season to fix a groin problem, but he is perhaps the most important cog in the machine, his high energy and composure on the ball so vital. This was rewarded when he deservedly won the fans player of the season last campaign, a huge achievement in our most successful season ever. Alongside Christie (or slightly behind him) are two brilliant options to anchor the midfield in Lewis Cook and Tyler Adams. Cook may be missing for the first month due to injury, but his adaptability and quality in the tackle on the ball, plus his leadership, make him so vital for the team. Adams might not quite have the quality on the ball that Cook does, but makes up for that with his desire to win the ball. He is in the top percentile in the Premier League for interceptions, tackles won, duels won and aerial duels won. We are a better team with Tyler Adams in it. Should he stay fit for the whole season, big things will happen.

Dango Ouattara is going to leave the club for a whopping £42.5M (!!!!!!), and Luis Sinisterra is departing on loan with an option to buy, but the club still have quality options out wide, and there is excitement about who the club can bring in – Amine Adil of Bayer Leverkusen is set to be the Dango replacement, with young Dario Osorio also rumoured, perhaps the Sinisterra replacement. To sell Ouattara for that much, having only really had one season of truly positive contribution, shows that we are in more than capable hands behind the scenes, with Tiago Pinto and Simon Francis doing everything they can to help Andoni Iraola.

And that leads us to the man himself, the man who makes us believe that we can go to heights never before possibly imaginable – Mr Iraola. His fearless approach to games means we never have to go places such as Anfield and fear we are going to stick 11 men behind the ball and just hope for the best. It gives me a sense of great pride knowing that whoever we are playing, Iraola will play in a way to go out and win. It doesn’t work all of the time, of course. If it did, Andoni would not still be managing us and even more of our players would probably have been snapped up. But it is such a great feeling to know that we are set up in a way that we can genuinely outplay some of the top teams – it doesn’t even have to be them on a ‘off day’ (despite what many pundits will tell you), sometimes we are simply better than them. Watching my team go and full press some of the best teams in the world is something I will never get bored of, and we are set up so quickly on the counter attack we have the ability to catch out any team in this league.

It would be nice if we can increase our goal conversion rate this season, we massively under-performed our xG last campaign, meaning we should have scored a lot more goals than we did. Across the two years of Iraola-ball there have been games that we should have blown teams out the water, but only won by one goal, causing some needless health problems across Dean Court. And sometimes it does come back to bite us when we inevitably do concede and find ways to lose, but I suppose that is just football, and many other teams will think the same. We are extremely competitive in almost all games, last season we lost just three games by more than one goal, and two of them came against Liverpool. That we lost nine games by just one goal was probably a great cause of frustration for Andoni – turning some of those losses into draws will only stand us in good stead. One major thing that will need to be improved is results against teams in the bottom half. We won 4/6 against the relegated teams last season, but given how bad they were, that needs to become 6/6. There is a feeling we can really struggle when teams sit in a low block and let us have the ball, especially if we do not take the lead early, and a sense of desperation ensues, but a goal never really feels forthcoming. Hopefully, Andoni has had his creative juices flowing this summer to think of ways to unlock pesky low blocks, whether that is someone who hasn’t had much of a chance like Hamed Traore, or slightly shifting the style of play on the ball.

Of course, whilst there is no need to fear this season in my opinion, expectations can be managed. I’m not expecting the team to be near relegation, nor am I particularly expecting another major European push. That’s a comfortable feeling to be able to have, not that we want to be mid-table forever, but there will be learning curves throughout the season, the whole backline still needs to be bedded in, and sometimes the football just won’t work. But for a club of our level, that is fine. Sometimes you have to rebuild a bit in order to keep moving forward, it’s always been like that with this club and I don’t see any reason why this scenario is any different.

That won’t be the mindset at the club of course – for them it is next man up in regards to the incomings, they have been signed because they are believed to be good enough, and the club will be hoping somewhat for another European push. The sky can always be the limit for AFC Bournemouth with Andoni Iraola in charge. It’s such an exciting time to be a Bournemouth fan, with the new, world class training facilities, the development of the ground coming soon, and of course the team we have on and off the pitch. Never take that for granted.

We headed to Anfield four games into the 2022/23 Premier League season – and that was a time to live in fear. The result does not need to be mentioned, but it was the major catalyst to the chaotic, brilliant, sometimes breathtaking football we get to see today. Enjoy it, embrace it – it may not last forever, and we’ll end up longing for the days we’re currently living in. It is easy as a football fan to not sit there and appreciate what you have, something I felt last year, but with everything we have now, compared to what we once did, I think it’s important to do so. Whatever happens over the course of the season, keep behind the team.

UP THE CHERRIES IN ALL DEPARTMENTS.