It's been a long summer, three months of drama as Spygate continues to roll on and pundits queue up to give their own take on the situation, but on Sunday we finally get to do our talking back where it matters, on the football pitch.

After a pre season of mix and match teams and the emphasis seemingly on the training ground and not on over cooking ourself in too many pre season friendlies, we had some idea of Tonda Eckert's thinking in the Carabao Cup win at Colchester United.

But it wasn't the complete picture, although the goalkeeper and back four will probably start on Sunday and there are still a few questions to be asked for the trip to Watford on Sunday afternoon.

Firstly who will replace Shea Charles in the centre of midfield and also Caspar Jander who is probably not ready for anything other than a late cameo for a few minutes.

At Colchester it was Matsuki, but the feeling was that this was not really his position and that perhaps Cameron Bragg will be the managers choice at Vicarage Road, that certainly seems to be the logical decision to partner Flynn Downs.

Next is who plays in front of them, last week it was Lewis Dobbin and he certainly has looked good in pre season, but when Finn Azaz came on for his first outing of pre season, you could see the improvement in how the team was playing, Azaz was the man who made us tick last season and he will be the key man again this.

However I don't think he is ready for the full 90 minutes after an injury hit pre season, so I suspect Dobbin will slot in.

Out wide is another choice, Leo Scienza is of course nailed on, but on the other side Eckert is spoiled for choice the aforementioned Matsuki, Tom Fellows, even Sam Edozie, if Azaz is playing in the centre it could even be Lewis Dobbin, so it is hard to predict, however assuming Dobbin is in the centre then it will be a toss up between Fellows & Matsuki, a good problem to have.

In the central striker role the queue is out of the door, Cyle Larin, Divin Mubama, Ben Brereton Diaz, Damion Downs, Cameron Archer & even Lewis Dobbin who seems to be able to play in most of the attacking positions and that in itself is an advantage.

On the face of it Cyle Larin would be the obvious choice, but again he has not had much of a pre season after his exploits in the World Cup, so could it be a debut for Divin Mubama, my money is on this.

All in all though it highlights the strength of the squad and the options we will have on the bench in all positions, it also highlights that ideally we will get quite a few players out of the door in the final fortnight of the transfer window and replace them with 1 or 2 key players, there won't be many teams in this division that will have had players of the quality of Arron Ramsdale playing for their U21 side and not even on the bench this weekend.

But the main thing is that we get back to the business on the pitch, there has been a lot said this summer off it where we have just had to sit back and take it, now we can finally make ourselves heard where it counts and hopefully start off as we ended last season and that is winning games of football.

The one elephant in the room though is our notorious poor start to seasons, rarely winning on the opening day, however slowly but surely we have made in roads on that, last season we beat Wrexham in the opener and 3 years ago defeated Sheffield Wednesday, so we have won 2 out of the last 3, now is a good time to make it 3 out of the last 4.

Traditionally we have always done well at Watford we haven't been beaten there in the last 11 outings including one in the cup, a run that goes back 19 years to our 3-2 reverse in September 2007 in the Championship.

Hopefully we will stretch that unbeaten run to the full 20 years by winning this season.

Once again we will take a sold out away section of our own fans and stare at a raft of empty seats in all parts of the stadium as they restrict us to the 2,000 minimum that they have to give us.

When they come to St Mary's they will want the full 3,000 of our away section, but should we give it to clubs who restrict us despite being well short of capacity, that is a question that is starting to grow quickly.

But our 2,000 will make a lot of noise, more noise than usual, Spygate has brought in a sense of unity amongst Southampton supporters and that can only help in our ultimate goal this season.

All Photos Via Reuters