West Ham manager Slaven Bilic is looking forward to locking horns with Chelsea and their new head coach Antonio Conte when the Premier League season gets underway on Monday, live on Sky Sports.
Bilic's side make the trip across London to Stamford Bridge after a busy pre-season campaign which has seen them progress to the Europa League play-off round.
The Blues will represent tough first opponents for West Ham as they look to put last season's disappointment behind them under Italian Conte, but Bilic is ready for the challenge.
"We are excited about the first game. We have had a good pre-season and have a good squad," he said.
"We are expecting the new signings to improve us. We expect a tough game against Chelsea on Monday."
Bilic is a big fan of Conte who took over at Chelsea following Italy's quarter-final exit at Euro 2016.
"Antonio Conte is a great manager and wants to change the way they approach the game and the principles. I rate him very highly," he added.
"I am sure he will do a good job there. But we beat the big teams away last season and it was a good experience for us."
West Ham have a couple of extra days to prepare for their opening fixture and Bilic said France playmaker Dimitri Payet, who returned late to pre-season training after the Euro 2016 final, could be involved.
"We still have four days to go," said Bilic at his press conference on Thursday. "We will see how we are going to start on Monday night. We have Plan A and Plan B. We have that already.
"We are still waiting to see on a couple of positions who is going to start. Dimitri Payet is one of the players. He came back very fit.
"He doesn't need a long pre-season, an individual one, but he is definitely not fit for 90 minutes so we are going to see. But he came back in really good shape, motivated and everything."