The long wait for Premier League football has ended in Cardiff but Malky Mackay's season objective is simple: survival

Guardian writers' predicted position: 18th (NB: this is not necessarily Louise Taylor's prediction, but the average of our writers' tips)

Last season's position: 1st, Championship

Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 5,000-1

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fittest of them all? This summer's smart money is on Sunderland to top the Premier League physical conditioning charts but Paolo Di Canio's newly mean and lean side could be pushed hard by Cardiff City.

A Premier League club for the first time in their history and back in England's highest division after a 51-year absence, Cardiff's unashamed aim is to finish above the bottom three.

Malky Mackay, their manager, believes enhanced fitness could offer them a slight, vital, edge in helping achieve that ambition and Martyn Pert, his conditioning coach, has been pushing the squad "harder, higher, further and faster" this summer.

An interesting character, Pert was a youth player at Norwich before graduating in sports science from Loughborough University and later working, variously, as Aidy Boothroyd's fitness guru at Watford, a manager (briefly) in Ecuador, Coventry City's assistant manager, Peter Taylor's No2 with the Bahrain national side and now Cardiff's conditioning expert.

A fluent Spanish speaker, he is, realistically, unlikely to still be in South Wales in five years' time. The same probably goes for Mackay; many Cardiff fans are hugely relieved their widely-admired manager did not defect to Everton earlier this summer but fear they may not hang on too him for too much longer.

For the moment though the Scot is staying put and will now endeavour to end this season's game of managerial snakes and ladders by remaining "hot property". To do so Cardiff must emulate Norwich, Swansea and Southampton rather than QPR and Reading and demonstrate that a club fresh from the Championship can survive, even thrive, among elite company.

Swansea, particularly, have raised the bar for Mackay but the coming months will surely be all about baby steps rather than attempting to enter into some sort of beauty contest with those surprisingly glamorous, über-cosmopolitan neighbours with names like Laudrup and Michu.

Quite apart from restoring a bit of welcome geographical balance to the Premier League, Welsh football's re-emergence has clearly captured the imagination of Steven Caulker.

Following a successful loan spell under Mackay's good friend Brendan Rodgers at Swansea a couple of years ago – (Cardiff's manager is also pals with Alan Pardew, who once made him his captain at West Ham) – Caulker decided he liked the area so much he has now swapped Tottenham for Cardiff for a club record £8.5m. Moreover the young centre-half believes the switch will enhance his England prospects.

Other summer signings acquired for a collective sum approaching £20m include John Brayford, the former Derby full-back who impressed greatly in the Championship last season but, with only 12 months remaining on his contract, has been recruited for a bargain sum somewhere south of £1.5m, and Andreas Cornelius.

A 20-year-old, 6ft 4in, Denmark striker signed from FC Copenhagen – where he scored 18 goals in 34 appearances last season – hopes are high for Cornelius. Especially after he cost £7.5m.

With the still-brilliant Craig Bellamy around to mentor him – not to mention other reliable old Cardiff hands such as David Marshall, Mark Hudson and Peter Whittingham – Cornelius looks to be joining a team possessing a sufficiently robust spine to weather inevitable Premier League storms.

Mackay, meanwhile, is hoping Kim Bo-kyung can help Cardiff produce the sort of three-dimensional football required at this level. A South Korean attacking midfielder who arrived from Cerezo Osaka of Japan for £2m last summer, he came to life during the closing stages of last season and has been the stand-out individual during a pre-season in which some fans were disappointed to see Tom Ince turn down a chance to swap Blackpool for the Welsh capital.

Cardiff could also do with Fraizer Campbell – a one time Manchester United reserve striker offered a solitary, perhaps surprising, senior England cap by Stuart Pearce – reprising the exciting form he briefly displayed at Sunderland before his career was derailed by two serious knee injuries.

While Sir Alex Ferguson will surely monitor Campbell's attempts to stick a, strictly metaphorical, two fingers up at those who have written him off, the former United manager has long taken a keen interest in Mackay's career, helping mentor a fellow Scot who, still only 41, appears to have a highly promising future.

Mackay – who played for Celtic, Norwich, West Ham and Watford before managing Watford – began his working life in a Glasgow bank, something which informs a management style which seeks to keep young players in touch with the "outside world".

At Watford Mackay regularly took junior members of his squad shopping in Sainsbury's, ensuring they not only learnt how to eat healthily and maintain their homes properly but grasped the need to spend money sensibly.

At Cardiff, the younger generation have been sent for sessions with a local chef who teaches them how to cook. Mackay is determined no one under his charge will find himself in the same position as the teenage Stilian Petrov at Celtic who broke down in tears one day in front of the club doorman explaining that his water, gas and electricity were all in danger of being cut off because he did not know how to pay bills.

Thanks partly to Mackay's skills and partly to the financial backing of Vincent Tan, the billionaire Malaysian businessman who has transformed Cardiff's financial fortunes – even if he, contentiously, re-branded the club from blue to red along the way – Bellamy and company are unlikely to find themselves cut adrift at the foot of the Premier League.

How well they actually do may depend on Mackay signing a "game-changing" player before the transfer window's closure. He is thought to have close to £10m left to invest from this summer's kitty and Peter Odemwingie, disaffected at West Brom, is among those on the shopping list.

They may not necessarily come out on top when Swansea visit the Welsh capital on Sunday, 3 November – a real Premier League fixture-list highlight – but Cardiff have no intention of returning to the Championship any time soon.

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