Well, it is that time of the year again; the time when people with my job are button-holed by random strangers and asked, with perfect earnestness, who it is going to be. My answer is usually that if I knew that I certainly wouldn’t be hanging around the reduced to clear aisle at Waitrose and they depart ticked off and none the wiser. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I can reveal who I would like it to be, however, for all the use that is.
I would like it to be Arsenal.
Sports writers should never be confused with people who can actually predict the future, such as David Blaine, or the Met Office. We are like pools experts or racing tipsters; if we could foresee what was going to happen, we would not need to work.
Anyone who has encountered me during Cheltenham week will know that my money moves the market in pretty much the same way as a rumour of coughing in the yard.
Still, there you have it: Arsenal. Not because I am a fan, or worse, a convert. I have no torch for Arsenal, other than enjoying the way they play football, and I am not alone in that.
Not because I think they are going to win it, either. I don’t. I had a sneaky feeling about Liverpool before they sold Xabi Alonso, and now I am leaning towards Chelsea only because I think there is a reason no team has won the league four times in succession, which is what Manchester United would have to do to keep it at Old Trafford.
This week, however, I did get the opportunity to spend some time with Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager. He was promoting the club charity which hopes to raise £500,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital, but that is not my reason to feel well disposed to him, either.
During the course of our conversation, though, Wenger spelled out the philosophy he takes into this season and it was hard not to fall a little in love.
He talked of bringing in players in their formative years, of educating them together, so that they would go out with a feeling for Arsenal’s culture, for its soul.
He hoped that this approach would give his young team the advantage over rivals whose own ideas are propelled only by the power of the owner’s chequebook.
And it probably will not work. It has not since the FA Cup final in 2005 — the last major trophy won by Arsenal — but the romantic in me still hopes, because success for Wenger would prove there is another way, a route to achievement that is increasingly ignored in the financial swirl of the modern game.
There will come a time when Arsenal, having paid for their new stadium, will generate vast sums of money and will use it to be the same as the rest. Right now, they should be enjoyed for what they are. Dreamers. Make the most of them before reality kicks in.