Premier League Saturday: Aug. 18, 2012

Whether you call it soccer or football, the season starts today with 7 Premier League matches in store on this glorious Saturday.

There’s no early kick-off, so we have 6 matches kicking off at the traditional time of 10am ET/3pm BST, followed by the match of the day between Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur at 12:30pm ET/5:30pm BST (on FOX Soccer). Joyous is probably the most apt word to describe my emotions, and hopefully yours.

The opening day of the Premier League season is often a strange one. On the opening day of the season last year, QPR lost 4-0 at home against Bolton Wanderers. But it was the Trotters who were eventually relegated at the end of the season. And who can’t forget Wolverhampton Wanderers’ fine start to the Premier League season last year? And they too ended up getting relegated. So while the results on the opening day of the season are important, I wouldn’t read too much into them quite yet.

Some of the things I’m looking forward to watching today: To see how Arsenal’s attacking threat looks like without Robin van Persie, how Liverpool will play their football against former LFC assistant Steve Clarke who is now manager at West Brom, how Michu will do in his Swansea competitive debut, whether Pavel Pogrebnyak can get a goal for Reading against Stoke, how Big Sam’s men will do against Paul Lambert’s new-look Villa, and what Fulham will look like sans Clint Dempsey. Newcastle against Spurs is the one that I’m really the most excited about, though.

Before, during and after today’s matches, post your rants, raves, questions and observations in the comments section.