By Allen Cummings

For me the season starts today at the London Stadium.

The visit of Bournemouth will provide us with a far better guide to how our new look team is taking shape under Manuel Pellegrini.

The Cherries might not have the attraction of a star-studded Liverpool side but they represent the kind of opposition against whom our season will be judged. The bread and butter of the Premier League of which we, like it or not, are a part.

Our performance against Bournemouth, and teams like them, that make up three quarters of the league, will define our season, and be a more reliable indicator as to whether we really are on our way to the ‘next level’.

Pellegrini promised us attacking football. We didn’t really see that last week, mainly because he felt the need to set up more cautiously than he generally prefers.

This Saturday I’m expecting a more adventurous, attack-minded line-up, probably  the 4-4-2 formation he appears to prefer, a more solid midfield behind two out-and-out strikers.

He’ll want to get the fans behind the team, start on the right foot, give us the brand of entertaining football we all crave, and have been sadly starved of in recent seasons.

The manager wasn’t happy with our lack of possession on Sunday, or our ability to keep the ball when we did have it. Those are the areas he’s sure to have worked on this week.

It’s far too early to label this as a ‘must win’ game – but it’s certainly a ‘must do better’ game. Something that could work in our favour is that there’s likely to be a bit of extra edge to this particular encounter.

. The first home game of the season always generates a good atmosphere. But the injustice a lot of us felt at the way we were denied victory last Boxing Day at the Vitality Stadium is bound to rise to the surface again.

Callum Wilson’s added time equaliser, which clearly went in with the help of his hand, despite his ‘innocent’ denials, robbed us of two valuable points as we battled for our Premier League survival.

Football fans have long memories and the prospect of exacting retribution and correcting an injustice will certainly be very much in the minds of West Ham supporters. Hopefully that will be instrumental in helping create the kind of atmosphere we want to hear at the LS. Saturday can’t come quickly enough for me.