THE experts have spoken – Manchester City will win the Premier League; Jose Mourinho will have to settle for a top-four place at best and transfer fees will top the trillion pound mark.

Okay, so I made up that last bit but only because I am starting to believe that football actually belongs in some parallel universe.

A hundred million quid for a player and nobody bats an eyelid. Especially friend Jose.

And anyway, all this predicting is just so much tosh like every other opinion poll. Of course there are certain things that are bound to happen in the world of football. Jose will have a spat with some unfortunate manager/player/broadcaster before the season is a month old. The names of Hull City and Burnley will head the list of favourites for relegation at about the same time. And referees will feel as though they are being beaten with a big stick.

In fact, up in Scotland they haven’t wasted any time getting that in – Ross County’s boss Jim McIntyre was reported to be “raging with the ref” after his team lost 3-1 to Dundee – calling for consistency as if that was an original complaint – and Lee Clark, boss of Kilmarnock spent all but 10 minutes of his team’s defeat by Motherwell in the stand.

Sky cameramen will have a great night on September 16– not so much because of what happens on the field but because of touchline antics of Messrs Antonio Conte and Jurgen Klopp. Chelsea v Liverpool will be the sideshow!

Leicester City showed last season that football can still be about football, but was anybody really listening? Already too many clubs, including the champions, have set their stall out – to reach 40 points to ensure their survival and continued membership among the game’s richest.

Why can’t the likes of Everton, with Ronald Koeman now in charge, or Sunderland or West Ham set their sights on doing a Leicester?

Why has the safety mark of 40 points become the height of some managers’ ambitions?

In the true spirit of joining in all the drivel, here’s one to give Mr Mourinho palpitations – Arsene Wenger will finish his career as manager of Arsenal by winning the Premier League championship. Remember, though, what I said earlier about predictions being a load of twaddle as proved by Leicester City.

OLDIE but Goodie – Jim Furyk, he of one of the strangest golf swings ever see, “like an octopus falling out of a tree” according to one critic – has become the first player to score a 58 on the US PGA Tour.

It wasn’t enough to win the Travelers Championship but surely it was proof that you don’t need a guru like Butch Harmon or the metronomic analysis of the experts to do rather well at the game. At 46 it’s too late for Furyk to change anyway.

THE Rio Olympics have not exactly grabbed the hearts and minds of the sporting public, especially here at home, so thanks to swimmer Adam Peaty for giving us some good news– Britain’s first gold medal.

His win in a world record time was a change from all the gloom stories about rough waters for the rowers, masses of empty seats for the gymnastics and women’s rugby.

Even the iconic Copacabana Beach drew only small crowds for the beach volleyball. Security, high winds and even stray bullets from a nearby military base have been grabbing more headlines than the events. Peaty’s win should be enough to change all that.

Meanwhile, cyclist Lizzie Armistead will return from Rio without a medal after finishing fifth in her road race, but I’m not sure many tears will be shed for the 27-year-old Yorkshire lass, especially among fellow Olympians. She missed three drug test dates and that would normally have led to a ban.

Instead she was allowed to compete and was presumably drug free.

But that has never been the point. And she didn’t win herself many friends by trying to blame everybody but herself for her troubles.

She may even have created something of an unwanted record as the first British athlete that the covering press gang would rather NOT win.