Our football predictions for the coming season.

Leicester City’s 5,000-to-one triumph in last season’s Premier League illustrated that making football predictions is more of a mug’s game than producing porcelain drinking receptacles bearing the disembodied head of in-play gambling proponent Mr Ray Winstone. It’s a relatively safe bet though that, with high-profile new managers installed at most of the top clubs and money changing hands like a round of speed Monopoly, this season will be nothing if not entertaining. Despite the inherent risks, MR PORTER has gazed into its crystal ball ahead of kick-off on 13 August to (facetiously) forecast the following scenarios. Place your bets now.

Tirelessly energetic new Chelsea manager Mr Antonio Conte will receive a touchline ban after encroaching onto the pitch. As well as for slide-tackling the opposition’s striker, running the length of the field and ramming the ball into the top corner from outside the box – as he was occasionally wont to do in his midfield heyday for Juventus – before turning to his befuddled players and screaming angrily, “That’s how you do it, you useless pieces of merda” (complete with sign language, just in case they can’t quite make him out).

Having enjoyed his first full pre-season and the opportunity to mould the team in his image, Liverpool manager Mr Jürgen Klopp will unveil the ultimate expression of his fabled “gegenpressing” philosophy: a bold new 0-0-10 formation. By strange coincidence, this is the exact equal and opposite of cap-wearing West Brom gaffer Mr Tony Pulis’ rather more pragmatic new 10-0-0 formation. The result when put on a pitch together? A goalless draw.

New Manchester United striker and taekwondo black belt Mr Zlatan Ibrahimović will follow in his mercurial, kung fu-kicking, philosophizing precursor Mr Eric Cantona’s footsteps. Namely, by scoring spectacular goals, single-handedly incapacitating an entire team (his own, for failing to pass to him enough) and conducting press conferences in the third person.

With Mr Paul Pogba finally signed, it will transpire that there is a clause in the contract of Manchester United’s world-record £89 million acquisition which stipulates that his former Red Devils manager Sir Alex Ferguson – who sold the extravagantly talented French midfielder in 2012 for just £800,000 – must prostrate himself in the centre circle at Old Trafford and publicly apologise for ever daring to think that Messrs Darren Fletcher, Tom Cleverley and Anderson were better. Mr Pogba will dazzle – primarily with a succession of outlandish, Mr David Beckham-topping haircuts – before jilting United for Real Madrid in the January transfer window.

In a literal display of grandstanding, self-regarding new Manchester United manager Mr José Mourinho will rename the Sir Alex Ferguson stand “The Special End”, to distinguish it from the more quotidian Stretford one.

Lacking the wealth of footballing talent he enjoyed at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, Manchester City’s Midas-like new manager Mr Pep Guardiola will resourcefully convert Fernandinho into a ball-playing centre half, Mr Fabian Delph into a false nine and Mr Wilfried Bony into something vaguely resembling a centre-forward. Most importantly, the urbane Spaniard will also remember to buy the notoriously anniversary-sensitive Mr Yaya Touré a birthday cake.

Against-the-odds table-toppers Leicester City will continue to embarrass bigger teams in their first season in the Champions League – mainly in interviews, where opposition managers and players are forced to confess that they don’t know where Leicester is.

Arsenal will start promisingly before the annual injury crisis kicks in, and their title challenge collapses before/during/after Christmas for want of one or two extra players. Long-serving manager Mr Arsène Wenger, a parsimonious economics graduate, will bemoan the insanity of the transfer market and the club’s relative paucity compared to the game’s financial superpowers, before freediving through piles of money like Scrooge McDuck.

After selling all their best players to Liverpool (again), and losing their manager to the other Merseyside club, Everton, Southampton will somehow still contrive to finish in the top eight. And above Liverpool.

With a team of bright young things shepherded by a bright young manager (Mr Mauricio Pochettino), Tottenham Hotspurs will win plaudits from all and sundry – with the exception of Arsenal fans – for their energetic, attractive play. They’ll build an unassailable lead at the top of the table, before promptly allowing it to be assailed in the “Spursiest” fashion possible – and finishing behind Arsenal.

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