It’s always louder on the first day of the season. And yellower.

There’s a very specific feeling that we all have before that first game. We might have bought well over the summer, bought not so well; the pre-season matches may have gone amazingly, or they may have gone badly.

But none of that really matters when the first Saturday of the season comes around. Anything is still possible, and in football hope has a habit of trumping worry.

Of course, some of us put on a front. This is in part a pre-emptive saving of face, just in case we’re absolute pony for 90 minutes and comprehensively beaten.

‘I’m not sure how well the new players will adapt,’ some of us say. ‘I don’t think we’ve strengthened enough since last season.’ We say all this whilst secretly – but firmly – believing that this could be our year.

What being ‘our year’ entails obviously depends a lot on which division we find ourselves in, but your wildest optimism is always entertained in the hours preceding that first kick off.

As it happened on the day, an hour before kick off we got the starting line-ups. Nordin Amrabat at wing-back and Adlene Guedioura as part of the midfield three were the talking points – everyone else pretty much had their places in the bag.

We wondered aloud whether this would be Guedioura’s year to make that spot his, and we talked about how now that Etienne Capoue was a year older and wiser we shouldn’t be surprised if he turned into that superstar he looks like he could be.

We excitedly suggested that we might once again see the best of Matej Vydra, now that he has tasted disappointment out on loan not only in the Premier League at West Brom, but in the Championship as well with Reading. He will work so hard this season, we all thought, and we’ll have a devastating finisher waiting in the wings on the bench every week. This is the year he becomes the player we always thought he would be.

I think it’s fair to say that over the course of the 90 minutes we were pretty good. We flaunted a new manager and a new system – albeit one that we’ve played in recent memory – and we more than held our own.

Interestingly, the selected starting XI was one that we could have fielded on the final day of last season. With Abdoulaye Doucoure apparently suspended, Isaac Success injured, and that elusive creative midfielder we are crying out for still refusing to appear from Juventus or Lille, depending on which day you read the paper, Walter Mazzarri could only choose from faces we all recognise well.

A long-awaited first goal for Capoue made us all seriously entertain that aforementioned thought that we could be right about his high prospects for the season, and an otherwise strong first half was reminiscent of our visit to Goodison Park at the start of last season.

As then, half-time was joyful. Everything was going to plan and more.

The second half wasn’t quite the same, with Southampton, perhaps expectedly, upping their game.

Nathan Redmond and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg in particular looked assured, and when the Saints scored, ‘this game is only going one way,’ echoed across the away end.

We stayed loud in the stands though, and despite going down to ten men thanks to an inspired piece of professionalism from Ben Watson, we held out.

We defended well, packing our penalty area and absorbed the relentless pressure that the 11 men of Southampton applied.

The ball even found itself in our net at one point, but an offside flag saved us, and served to make quite a few Saints fans near the home/away divide pretty embarrassed, as their raucous celebration and goading of those dressed in yellow was quickly halted.

The final whistle came after more than four minutes of frantic added time. Cue rapturous applause and passionate debate in equal measure.

What was Heurelho Gomes doing for their goal? Should Watson really have brought down Shane Long? (Yes.) Weren’t we good in our new shape? Wasn’t Mazzarri enthusiastic on the touchline? And what position is Juan Camilo Zuniga even supposed to play?

God, it’s great to be back, isn’t it?