Manchester City. These two words have been on my mind since the last day of last season, when we put the Fink Tank test tubes on the drying rack and hung the “Gone Fishing” sign on the laboratory door.

Each season, before the first ball has been kicked in anger, this column provides its forecasts for the season. Dr Henry Stott, Dr Ian Graham and Dr Mark Latham take the goals and shots on goal for the past two seasons and input them into the Predictor computer model. With later results counting more heavily than earlier ones, the model produces a team ranking. Then the Fink Tank team takes the final step — simulating this season’s league competition over and over again to provide the probability of any given club finishing in any given place.

Over years this has provided a very good insight into the season to come. It is much, much better than guessing. But it has two shortcomings.

The first is that it finds it hard to deal with newly promoted clubs. By using cup matches to compare different divisions, it is possible to have a good stab at how the clubs will do. But it often takes a month for the model to adjust better.

The second is that it is hard to deal with big changes in personnel.

Trying to make manual alterations leads you into error and we have found it better to let the probabilities adjust as the results come in.

Nevertheless, big money movements reduce our predictive success for a period. So Manchester City have been on my mind.

I have a few thoughts about what money might mean for City — and transfers overall might mean for the race for honours in the Barclays Premier League this season — during this campaign, but before I share them, let’s have a look at what the raw data has to say.

First, there is the fight for the title. Manchester United are favourites with a 41 per cent chance, but Chelsea are not far behind, at 32 per cent. We did not rate Liverpool’s chances of title glory that highly last season and this time it is the same, I’m afraid. They have a 14 per cent chance and Arsenal a 12 per cent chance.

The only team with a chance of more than 10 per cent of breaking into the top four are Everton (17 per cent). Tottenham Hotspur have a 10 per cent chance.

At the other end, the team with the biggest chance of relegation, because of their dreadful attack, are Stoke City (48 per cent), closely followed by Hull City (47 per cent). Burnley have a 41 per cent chance of going down and Sunderland a 37 per cent chance. Wolverhampton Wanderers do better (a 34 per cent chance of relegation) and Birmingham City better still (33 per cent).

The other teams with a more than 10 per cent chance of relegation are Bolton Wanderers (16 per cent), Wigan Athletic (14 per cent) and Portsmouth (12 per cent).

What about transfers? We have tried a crude approximation. Using the Fink Tank player rating data, we have estimated the first XI of each club and seen how much difference players going in and out make to the best available team. This at least gives us a feel for the scale of difference.

We think that Manchester City’s haul might improve them by something in the region of 13 points. This would give them a good shot at finishing fifth (although Spurs have bought well, too) but makes them still underdogs (in the 10 per cent range) for coming fourth. And Manchester United without Cristiano Ronaldo? They have dropped perhaps three points, making the title race a toss-up.