finish playing like the East Fife reserves in a bounce game in Kinross on a wet Tuesday evening in December (I exaggerate slightly).

The main issue last season for Sunderland was, of course, the January departure of Darren Bent in a suspiciously unambitious move to Aston Villa for the suspiciously high price of £24m. The remaining man of international-class they have up front is the creative unpredictability of Asamoah Gyan, definitely one of my favourite players of last season (not least for his wonderful goal against England at Wembley). He has been joined up front by something of a gamble by Steve Bruce – Connor Wickham is undoubtely a talented young lad with a big future ahead of him, but it is asking an awful lot of an 18-year-old,choice. What.) and Simon Mignolet.

In all, some shrewd, classy signings from Bruce, mixed with some sound Premier League experience and a bit of fire in the necessary areas = a decent finish for the Black Cats in 2011-12

10. Bolton Wanderers

At the bottom of the top half, I see Bolton Wanderers. Owen Coyle has them playing a good brand of football (very un-Bolton-like), and he’s a manager undoubtedly on the up and up (see, obviously, his excellent record with Burnley beforehand). Bolton did stutter to a halt a bit at the end of last season once they knew they were safe – Coyle is going to have to get his troops to put the effort in over the 38 games to improve on last season’s final position.

The close-season has