Wednesday columnist Giles Smith believes Sunday's result flattered the visitors, and foresees a season of fun at the Bridge.

It's probably a little early in the season to be handing out prizes. At the same time, I, for one, don't expect to see a ball punched as far or as high as the one David James of Portsmouth categorically put his fist through in the last seconds of the first half on Sunday, in an expression of dismay about the penalty we had just been given.

The ball practically cleared the junction of the Shed End and the West Stand, leaving all of us who witnessed it thinking, 'I'm actually quite glad that wasn't my head.' James, of course, ended up getting an automatic yellow card for ball-abuse, although, during an Olympics in particular, it might equally have been worth getting a tape measure out and checking the official record books.

Still, that moment of condensed frustration on behalf of the opposition's goalkeeper spoke volumes about the nature of Sunday's match and a performance in which Portsmouth weren't merely defeated by a stronger side but were, rather, cut up into small cubes and tinned in their own syrup. As Martin Samuel, writing in 'The Times', said, the 4-0 scoreline 'flattered Portsmouth'. It could have been double that or slightly more.

I'm sure I wasn't the only fan in the ground who quite liked what he saw, and who left the ground tingling with anticipation about what might lie in store when this team shakes off its early-season stiffness and gets going properly. Who knows what visiting goalkeepers will be punching, and how far, as the year wears on?

I try to persuade myself, most Augusts, that the season has come around too soon - that it's still the summer, that the schools haven't even gone back, that it's too early to be seeing pictures of Sir Alex Ferguson chewing wasp-flavoured gum on the sidelines, that I haven't yet recharged the batteries sufficiently to find the necessary energy to get properly annoyed by Rafa Benitez all over again. And I probably tried to persuade myself that this was the case even harder this year, in the aftermath of what this column promises only ever to refer to in the future as 'events in Moscow'.

But then the season kicks off, and you pitch up for the first home game and the familiar faces are still around you, and your subtly enhanced team is suddenly storming all over the place like Brazil, and you find yourself sitting there, forgetting 'events in Moscow' altogether and thinking, 'Actually, I did rather miss all this while it was gone.' And, what do you know? Finding Benitez annoying is as easy as ever, without either of you really having to try. Why, he's as annoying as if you and he have never been away.

Doubtless you will have your own ideas about what was signalled by those first properly competitive 90 minutes under Scolari. But as far as I can see, the game plan is, roughly speaking, to flood the midfield with eye-watering quantities of creativity and to encourage Jose Bosingwa and Ashley Cole, or whoever happens to be playing at full back, to spend as much time as is humanly possible in the opposition's six-yard area. Meanwhile, the back-door is intended to remain solidly bolted, thanks to John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho continuing to do their unrivalled two-man impression of a brick wall, and with a reborn John Mikel Obi stepping across to cover.

Incidentally, I was glad that sense prevailed and that Fabio Capello decided to keep John Terry as England captain. Most of the prior wisdom had suggested he would opt for Rio Ferdinand - and, with the announcement due to come on the same afternoon that Christine Ohuruogu clinched gold in the womens 400 metres, what a day that would have been for people with a flexible attitude to drug testing. Fortunately, Capello is paid a lot of money to get these things right, and he did so.

Anyway, for me, the emblematic moment on Sunday occurred directly after the scoring of our first goal. Under other administrations in our not too distant past, the opening of the scoring would very frequently have represented an opportunity to sit back for a while, consolidate, and basically pass the ball across the back four for anything up to another hour and a quarter, or until such time as the referee blew the final whistle.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Indeed, it quite often wins titles. But you know what I mean.

The point is, on Sunday, within 30 seconds of the restart (no exaggeration here), we were back in Portsmouth's penalty area and once again messing around with poor old Sol Campbell's mind. It represented, I think, a fairly sizeable change of philosophy and one which could ensure that the intensity, volume and general joyfulness of the singing heard during that first half (it successfully drowned out the debut of the new Premier League Anthem beforehand, too, which was nice) will be duplicated many times this season.

Even so, this is no time for undue confidence and wanton predictions. These are only the very earliest stages of a complex project-in-progress, after all, and, let's face it, we won't beat everyone 4-0. Some teams we're going to beat 5-0 or 6-0.

However, I am prepared, at this point, to put my head out so far, and predict this: that, on the evidence of Sunday, we are extremely unlikely to go down. Furthermore, I reckon we're going to have a lot of fun not doing so. Fair comment?