mail notification gone

I recently upgraded to (well it was actually a clean new install) snow leopard, I found that the new apple mail behaves differently than what in leopard.

In leopard I had the small red icon indicating the number of new mails, as long as mail is open.

In SL this is no longer the case, the mail tells nothing of what's going on, it just appears it has nothing new whereas new mails do come.

I believe it's something to do with the new imap adoption in apple mail/gmail.

Oh yeah forgot to mention that I use gmail only.

Not being an expert, could anyone tell me how to adjust the setting so that apple mail can notify of new mails again?