They are mug bets that nobody wants to lay. You know you should be grateful for an outright market where the opportunity exists to lay three teams who make up nearly 60 per cent of the book, but you can't suppress the urge to tell opportunity where to shove it.

So, before we go any further, let's get a few things straight.

Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield will all finish in the top six of League One this season. Quite possibly, they will all finish in the top three. And Southampton will probably win the title.

If you think otherwise, then go ahead and fill your boots. We wish you the very best of luck, but don't come crying to us when you've done your dough.

And if we take this bullish crystal-ball gazing a stage further, we might also say that any two from Peterborough, Brighton, Charlton and Plymouth will make up the rest of the top six, leaving just enough room perhaps for one interloper.

The third tier of English football has become mind-numbingly predictable in recent seasons and we simply can't see an end to the trend of big budget teams bossing the show.

Southampton need no introduction. They didn't fail in their bid to win promotion last season, they just ran out of time.

Now they don't need to build a team from scratch and they won't be hampered by a 10-point deduction, so we should expect nothing less than a repeat of the two-points-per-game ratio they maintained over the final 36 games last term.

They have billionaire owners and probably the greatest manager to have ever managed at this level, so you suspect the only thing that could prevent them clinching promotion is if the relationship between the two is destroyed by a clash of personality or impatience.

Sheffield Wednesday probably wouldn't have been relegated from the Championship had Alan Irvine been appointed sooner. He was thrust into the Hillsborough hot-seat on January 8 and responded in inspired fashion, ending a 12-match winless run with five wins in seven matches.

However, it was an impact that proved to be a curse as the transfer window slammed shut before he was able to properly diagnose the cause of Wednesday's illness. Expect the former Preston boss to mould a number of eye-catching summer recruits into a formidable proposition.

Huddersfield improved as last season progressed, finding a cure for their patchy away form to finish the campaign on 80 points. They have also strengthened in crucial areas over the summer and seem bound to improve.

Of the other top-six candidates, Peterborough and Plymouth appear to have made solid managerial appointments and much will depend on how quickly Gary Johnson and Peter Reid get to grips with the remnants of a losing culture in their respective dressing rooms.

Brighton were clearly making good progress under Gus Poyet towards the back end of last season once the players started to understand the subtlety of his intelligence and continental methods, so they could be a real threat if they pick up where they left off but success will come at a price.

Poyet will always be a sexy appointment for someone else and success for the Seagulls will always be undermined by a persistent insecurity that he will be whisked away before the job is complete.

As for Charlton, they've endured a frustrating summer in the transfer market, losing a couple of key performers in Nick Bailey and Lloyd Sam, while struggling to secure targets in the ideal timeframe, so a fuller picture might not begin to emerge until the end of August.

Last season, they enjoyed a blistering start but struggled to sustain it, this season could be the other way around. So keep an eye out for any big prices on the Addicks for promotion if they labour early doors.

All of which makes for mildly interesting narrative, but where is the wager? What's the point of a betting preview without a bet? Surely somebody must be out of line with somewhere?

Well, it's only once we delve into the realms of potential surprise packages that we begin to see clear disparities with our opinions and the prices, enough to warrant long-term investment.

Indeed, we could probably wheel out a number of season match bets that catch the eye among the supposed also-rans but we'll settle for the best of the bunch by taking a solid even money on Brentford to finish above Bristol Rovers.

The two teams were neck and neck on 62 points at the end of last season, although Brentford finished two places further up the table due to a goal difference superior by 14.

However, it's worth bearing in mind how the Bees improved as the campaign progressed while the Pirates drifted back into the pack following a blistering start and their respective summer transfer activity would suggest the two clubs will continue to head in opposite directions.

At Griffin Park, the core of a disciplined squad remains intact with only Ryan Dickson leaving against the club's wishes, although his departure has been softened by the arrival of nine new faces, each of whom, on paper, should improve the squad if Scott can integrate them smoothly.

By contrast, virtually nothing has changed at the Memorial Stadium, even though things clearly needed freshening up among a group of players who appeared to steadily lose confidence in their own ability once the magnitude of Rickie Lambert's departure to Southampton had set in.

Obviously potential exists for Paul Trollope to conduct some inspired business in the final week of August and beyond that in the loan market from September, but with only Will Hoskins and Luke Daniels to show for his efforts so far, we believe the depth of quality between the two squads at present will prove too much to bridge.