Man City fans are the MOST CONFIDENT, as 80% believe they will win the title

Manchester City fans are the most confident in the Premier League ahead of the new season, new research has revealed.

Pep Guardiola's side lifted the title last season for the fourth time in five years and their supporters believe they are in a good place to do so again.

A study commissioned by BT Sport used cutting edge science to test whether fans really believe their own predictions for the new campaign.

Working with Imperial College London, a team of neuroscientists used state-of-the-art functional MRI technology to analyse fans' beliefs ahead of the upcoming football season.

The survey revealed that 80% of Manchester City fans think that their team will finish top of the league this season, while the MRI technology showed that 48% of Citizens are either confident or very confident in predicting the final table.

Liverpool pushed City all the way in 2021-22 and are set to be their nearest challengers again, but just 69% of Reds fans think they will win the league and only 33% were shown to be confident in their predictions.

Other fan bases that view themselves as league winners include Chelsea (31%), Arsenal (22%) and Manchester United (22%).

'It's at this time of the year that everyone looks ahead to the new season and tries to forecast what will happen,' Jamie Hindhaugh, head of BT Sport, said.

'Our fan survey highlights some notable predictions, while our campaign tests those beliefs to find out if fans really do think they're true.'

There is fresh optimism at Newcastle following the club's Saudi-backed takeover last year and 77% of Magpies fans believe that their team will win the Premier League title within the next decade.

Meanwhile, most Premier League fans (64%) feel Manchester United will never recover the level of success they achieved during the Sir Alex Ferguson years and almost half (48%) of the club's own fans agree with this view.

The research also looks at the predicted league positions of each club and compares that to where fans would place their own clubs.

The most optimistic fans are Crystal Palace and Brighton - with their supporters' predicted finishing positions three places higher compared to other fans predictions of their club's finishing position.