A lot can happen in a few days: Premier League season kicks off next week

It feels like a lot has happened the last few days but nothing really has, apart from the signing of Jose Angel Crespo and a whole lot of speculation. But it's Friday so I expect a lot of that speculation to be concluded today.

Why today? Aston Villa isn't a modern responsive company; tomorrow is the weekend and people don't want to work the weekend. That much is known when they sometimes publish stories on the website with a different date to the actual date. The business will get done today hopefully and we'll get quotes and stories fed to us all weekend.

And if you believe the speculation, we've got the likes of Berbatov, Adebayor, Veretout and Gestede all about to sign (three of those are strikers) and there are other names getting thrown about too.

It's definitely going to be an interesting season and nobody can deny it's not been an interesting summer. But will it pay off?

Bournemouth away next weekend

I only ask because we've got a fairly promising opening four games to the season, where we would have used to have been looking for nine or ten points but based on recent seasons, I suspect many would be ecstatic with four or six.

And there is no reason for me writing this other than blind optimism and I could be making it up, but don't we start well? I mean, I've got a feeling that we don't just slump from the kick off of the season, we start well, right? But that's the past, this is the managers first ever start to a Premier League season and he's going to learn a lot.

I mean, if all these new players that are rumoured to be coming do actually arrive, we're potentially going to start with an almost new side and what happens to the likes of Grealish, Gabby, Gil, Sanchez and Westwood? I mean, as it stands now we will likely start against Bournemouth with six new players - what are we to expect?

Me, I'm going to enjoy it and right now I'm at my default position. They need time to get to know each other, understand what the manager wants and to acclimatise themselves to the pace of the Premier League. It should happen quite quickly as they're all professionals and my point about how we start; I'm not so sure it will point to much this season as with this many changes and more to come, nothing is going to have found a rhythm just yet.