The ever-complex psychology of the football fan is under the microscope in this week's column.

Some of my best friends are Gooners, and one of them was telling me, as early as last Thursday, that we were going to beat Arsenal 4-0 at the Emirates on Sunday.

4-0? At the Emirates? It sounded good.

But, of course, he was wrong. It wasn't 4-0 at all. It was only 3-0.

Predictions: they're a mug's game.

Mind you, close call - you've got to hand my friend huge credit for that. In fact, if Florent Malouda had only managed to attack that cross a bit harder in the third minute of injury time, then my friend would have entirely nailed it, and I would be regarding him with slightly spooked awe and asking him if he has any feelings in his water about Uncle Nobby's Biscuit Tin in the 2.20 at Plumpton.

At the risk of sounding slightly faithless, I should say that I wasn't talking in terms of 4-0, or even 3-0, before Sunday's game. If anything, I'd have been more likely to talk up the possibility of us LOSING 4-0 - not necessarily believing it entirely, and not because I genuinely reckon Arsenal are that kind of side these days, but more as a kind of pre-emptive move, designed to protect myself from embarrassment in the event of the worst possible disaster.

(Which is kind of what I thought my Gooner friend might have been up to, with his 4-0 to Chelsea - though, I see now, with hindsight, that it was nothing of the sort, and that, in fact, in this case, he was offering an entirely reasoned and almost stunningly accurate appraisal of the situation, based on intimate and knowledgeable acquaintance with the facts and a deep understanding of football in general.)

That sort of negativity is just how some of us are, I'm afraid. Some of us are more likely to be pessimistic in advance of matches, for all sorts of psychological reasons that probably wouldn't do us much credit if you bothered to unpack them.

Take that game from 1971, against Jeunesse Hautcharage of Luxembourg in the European Cup Winner's Cup, when we won 8-0 away from home (and eventually went on to rack up a record-busting aggregate score of 21-0).

Had I been old enough to attend the second leg, I'd probably have been found drifting up the Fulham Road, at around 7.15 pm, with my hands in my pockets, muttering miserably about the likelihood of the visitors banging in an eighth in the final minute to take the tie to extra time.

But sometimes, surely, the past pleads with you to take a guarded view. And never more so than when we're playing Arsenal.

On Sunday, even at an enormously comfortable 2-0, with the home side finding our defence harder to get through than the Berlin Wall, circa 1965, I still found I had my finger nails clenched into my palms.

That's because, against Arsenal, we have a long history of romping into seemingly unassailable leads, only to be made subject to strange and emotionally deranging reversals.

Like thousands of us, I can still see Chelsea scoring twice at Highbury, only for Arsenal to come back. Like thousands of us, I can still see Kanu beating Ed de Goey from somewhere near the corner flag. Even last season, at home, we managed to take the lead and lose. With them it's been like the bathroom scene in 'Fatal Attraction', again and again.

Needless anxiety this time, of course. And, even with me, the tension did finally release at 3-0, with Didier Drogba's almost inhumanly fierce free kick, a shot which cleared the stadium more efficiently than rumours of an outbreak of Sarin gas.

But in no way had I predicted that result, and the point is, sometimes you underestimate your own team, being too close to them, and it takes the clear-eyed view of an outsider to reveal them to you in their full, unassailable glory.

And even though I'm still uncomfortable, on grounds of basic, primitive superstition, with some of the headlines we've seen since the weekend, such as 'The Title Is Ours, Says Ancelotti' (which isn't what he said, in fact, but never mind), I was grateful for Sunday's lesson, and I'm hoping to learn from it and become a more openly confident person as the season goes on.

In the meantime, here's something I AM prepared to stick my neck out and predict, in all seriousness, with no hidden agendas, just for the hell of it: the names of the teams who will form the top four in the Premier League at the end of the season.

Everyone has gone on about how this year, more than any other in recent history, offers the possibility of a change to the established order - how the chances have never been better for the likes of Tottenham, Manchester City and Aston Villa to step up a level, claim the right to be taken seriously, and finally graduate into the Champions League places.

So, taking all that into account, and assessing the current form of those teams who are currently in the cherished positions, and those teams who are bubbling under so promisingly, my prediction for the top four in May, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United.

Can't seriously see any further than those four myself, can you?