Title winners
Chelsea. I know, I hate to believe it too. But Jose Mourinho's Chelsea have always had something that reminds me of a terminal disease - horrible but unstoppable. Admittedly last season there was a remission of sorts, but that was because Chelsea themselves suffered from a nasty case of Seba-Veronitis: a crippling affliction that strikes successful teams who inexplicably decide to fix what ain't broke and bring in expensive talent, shaking up a previously settled dressing room and unbalancing a winning formula. For Veron in 2001 read Shevchenko and Ballack in 2006.
This season, on the other hand, Chelsea have bought quietly but well, expanding a threadbare squad. The one high-profile signing, Malouda, is exactly the sort of hard-working, talented-yet-selfless team player that Mourinho (and Benitez) admires, plus he's an old team-mate of Drogba's from Guingamp, so the understanding is ready-made.
More important than any of that, though, is who has stayed. Drogba and Essien are absolute monsters, Terry is Carragher with added threat from set-pieces, Lampard - despite his continuing uselessness in an England shirt, deflected goals against Germany notwithstanding - is still a bewilderingly effective goal-getter in Chelsea blue, and suddenly Shaun Wright-Phillips is threatening to do a Joe Cole and actually fulfil his potential. Throw in Cashley Cole, Carvalho, Mikel, Cech, and Makalele, and they're going to take a lot of stopping; I'm sad to say I don't think anyone else has got what it takes.
Second place
Liverpool. Sorry to sound unambitious, but second place would be a huge, huge result for us this season - especially if we can keep the ghost of a title race going well into spring. Some younger Liverpool fans can barely remember the feeling of a proper tilt at the league - even when we came second in 01-02 we were stumbling in January and out of it by March. The signings we've made look excellent, as I've discussed elsewhere in these columns. Add to them an improving Kuyt and Pennant and the rest of a tough and talented side, and we should do well this season. That said, new signings always need time to settle, and we're surely bound to have a sticky patch mid-season even if we can keep up this full-throttle start, so I'd be happy with keeping Chelsea in sight right to the end. We should be able to do it if we lose our travel sickness, nab a few points against the big three, and develop a ruthless streak against lesser teams which has been conspicuous by its absence in the last few years.
Third and fourth
United and - probably - Arsenal. United have been unlucky - lots of injuries early on, and losing to a dogged but limited City side - but a lot of the problems are of their own making. Getting rid of Giuseppe Rossi was an error - now that Solksjaer has retired, Sick-Note Saha is their only proper centre-forward; neither Tevez nor Rooney look comfortable as a lone striker. Also, I suspect that the dreaded Seba-Veronitis (see above) may have struck again. Yes, Nani, Anderson and Tevez are young, but they're still expensive stars, used to being big fish in small ponds; they need time to settle. And Hargreaves seems like exactly the player United needed, playing an all-action Gattuso to Carrick's measured Pirlo, but it means moving Scholes out of the deep-lying role in which he was so effective last season and back in to a more high-energy forward position that his ageing tendons may struggle with. United will be back, but not this year. A classic "transitional season", as the cliché goes.
Arsenal are harder to predict. Arsene Wenger has such a nose for young talent that you wouldn't want to bet against them all coming good unexpectedly - Denilson, Diaby and Walcott could all do a Fabregas and suddenly make the leap from potential to actuality. This Eduardo da Silva could turn out to be the cold-eyed poacher that Arsenal so obviously lack - someone who is actually willing to put his foot through the ball from six yards instead of perpetually seeking the cute sideways pass for a walk-in - and Hleb and Rosicky could finally start looking like the players they were in Germany. If all that happens, then maybe the title challenge their more optimistic fans are prophesying will materialise. However, you can't help but think that the Arsenal problems of the last few seasons - strikers who won't shoot and midfielders who can't tackle - are not going to get better overnight; and it is equally possible that, if Fabregas gets hurt or their fragile and unconvincing new hard-man act gets found out on away-days in the North, they will struggle to keep the improving Spurs, Everton or - perhaps - Newcastle teams away from the final Champions League spot.
Relegation
Derby (obviously), Birmingham, Bolton/Sunderland
Poor old Derby - no sooner do Watford go down than they are replaced by a team exactly as hard-working, honest and irretrievably doomed. They'll beat Sunderland's dismal twelve-point haul from two seasons back, but that must surely be the limit of their ambitions.
Birmingham are better than Derby. In fact they're almost as good as Arsenal Reserves now - a standard they've achieved through the simple expedient of signing most of Arsenal Reserves. Still, though, their miserly defence last season needed more strengthening than it has received in order to deal with Premiership attackers, and at this level they'll find it too hard to nick the goal their trademark 1-0 wins demand as well. Nineteenth place.
Bolton are floundering badly. A three-nil win over Reading was unexpected, but is surely a solitary blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downwards trajectory. Big Sam had Big Shoes, and in attempting to fill them Lee is rapidly developing the wild-eyed, floundering look of a drowning man. In fact the only thing that can save them this season will be some other team collapsing more spectacularly than they do - and my pick for Team Most Likely is…
Sunderland. Everyone seems to assume that the unexpectedly urbane and articulate Roy Keane has got his team a bye through to next season; I suspect that they are going to find the Premiership harder than people think. Their team, while tidy, lacks any real spark of talent - their captain and best player, ex-Oxford United man Dean Whitehead, is out for six months, and players like Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Ian Harte and Kieran Richardson are either has-beens or never-will-bes. Perhaps more worryingly still for the Black Cats, Keane has developed a Keegan-like tendency to talk about "character", "heart" and "spirit" instead of "technique", "touch" or "ability". That sort of blether might get you the England job - it's not good enough for real managers. I suspect they'll do just enough to keep their heads above Bolton, but it'll be close.
And finally…
Premiership manager most likely to be relegated while looking remarkably like a guinea pig
Sammy Lee. Well, he does.