Neville Dalton is a journalist with the BBC News website and a Portsmouth fan of nearly 40 years. His expressed views are his and not necessarily those of the BBC.

So it's here, then – the start of another season.

Another Premiership season. Our fourth.

You could almost get blasé about it.

And yet we're nearly all worried – concerned that we haven't got enough new faces in; that the ones we have got won't be good enough, or that we could have chosen better.

What better sign of the times than the fact that hard-bitten, forever optimistic (but totally realistic) Pompey supporters are worried about the arrival of three players who just 14 months ago were playing together – for England?

What were Pompey doing 14 months ago? Ah yes, I remember. Celebrating a last-minute escape from relegation from the Premiership.

Much like the season before, then. And the season just gone.

I know we finished 13^th in our first year back in the top flight, but to all intents and purposes we're perennial fighters against relegation.

Brief adventure

Those of us who recall our only previous season in the top division in the last 40 years would have been grateful for that epithet.

The League Division One 1987/8 adventure was over far too quickly for our liking. Suddenly we were watching international footballers and other household names every week in our ramshackle stadium, or at ageing (but famous and charismatic) monoliths like Anfield, Old Trafford and Highbury.

And we wanted more. But it was not to be.

Ever since we clinched a return to the top flight a few years back, I've been clinging to that memory – one season is great.

But two would be a bonus – a level of consistency that we haven't before shown in my lifetime.

Now here we are contemplating our fourth in a row. We may be among everybody's favourites for relegation, but we have a right to be regarded in the way Charlton and Bolton were a few years ago – Premiership new(ish) boys, but now established among England's élite.

It's a fact we should never forget – particularly when we remember what happened to our beloved club in the barren years between those two top-flight forays.

European candidates

And yet we're viewing this coming season with a mixture of boyish enthusiasm, nervous trepidation and no little frustration that we haven't got a squad full of big names.

How times change. And yet it is surely right that we should be showing ambition; looking for the club to make the step up from relegation candidates to comfortable, mid-table Premiership regulars, if not outsiders for Europe.

As I look at the squad currently in place for season 2006/7, I can't quite decide whether to be preparing to thumb the roadmaps of Europe in preparation for a UEFA Cup run next year or to check the routes for Hull, Luton and Ipswich in case of disappointment.

Actually, for me it's quite easy. I'm afraid nearly 40 years of following Pompey have turned me into an eternal pessimist, and I fear we're in for another long, hard struggle this season.

We were only just good enough last season – and much of that was thanks to an extraordinary run.

We've lost two of the players who helped trigger that run (D'Alessandro and Priske); have so far failed to replace one and while arguably we have replaced the other, many of us feel we should not be replacing but supplementing - employing at least two quality players for each position if we are to make the progress that Milan, Harry and – by implication if not actual promise – Sacha have predicted.

Best in England

I'll reserve judgment on how effective Glen Johnson, Sol Campbell, David James and David Thompson will be for Pompey this coming season.

But what I do know is that the first three in particular are among the best in their positions in England. They may not be at their best just now, but 12 or so months ago, most of us would have been delighted at the thought of even one of them being at Fratton Park.

It's surely testament to Harry – and, of course, Sacha's cash – that we have been able to attract players of this quality to the club.

I can't think of another manager who could have persuaded the likes of Campbell to sign ahead of other clubs around Europe and elsewhere.

And ask most Manchester City fans what they think of James and they'll struggle to recall a mistake he made that cost them a goal, let alone a point.

He's still one of the best goalkeepers in England, but will he do it for Pompey?

Will Sol continue his incredible decline in form that saw him fall from first-choice England centre-half to an error-ridden shadow of his imperious best in little more than a year?

Or is he over all his problems now? Can Harry bring out the best in him, and can he bounce back into the sort of form that made him an England regular?

And what about Johnson? Was his impressive teenage form a flash in the pan, or are we to benefit from his efforts to justify a first-team return to Chelsea?

Will David Thompson show why Harry surprised most of us by signing him?

Will Gary O'Neil repeat his amazing form of last season? Will Pedro Mendes be given the chance to run midfield, as he did for the second, so successful, half of last season?

Will Benjani Mwaruwari continue his one-game Premiership goalscoring spree, and will any other forward be fit enough to join him on the pitch?

It's the unknown – but the thought that this just might be a new beginning – that makes the prospect of this coming weekend so exciting, just like four years ago.