Bournemouth are a team on the rise, who have bought players familiar with the demands of English football, and their fans are entitled to believe that Eddie Howe can keep them up

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 17th (NB: this is not necessarily Barry Glendenning’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

In an interview with the Guardian conducted not too long after securing promotion, Eddie Howe revealed: “It’s going to be a difficult season so I just hope Bournemouth people still like me this time next year.” It was August in 2013 and the manager was looking forward to his team’s assault on the Championship, having returned from an unfruitful, but by his own admission highly educational, spell in charge of Burnley to secure promotion from League One.

A little under two years on and it is almost certainly safe to say that any lingering resentment felt by Bournemouth fans towards the young manager who briefly abandoned them for pastures new has evaporated. Having sat seven points adrift of safety in the basement of League Two and facing financial oblivion when Howe took over in 2009, the club will play Aston Villa in the first top-flight match of their 116-year history on the opening day of the season at home. Here’s a question: would you confidently bet against them winning it?

Bournemouth arrive in the Premier League as worthy champions of a thrilling league that took a huge amount of winning and their coronation was not guaranteed until the final day. No team scored more goals. No team tried more shots. No team attempted or successfully completed more passes. No team enjoyed more possession. They are a side whose players are genuinely comfortable on the ball.

In other areas of interest to eggheads, only one team faced fewer shots on target or kept more clean sheets, and Howe’s men were fifth in the table for crosses pinged goalwards from open play. They can adapt, when required, from the lightning pass-and-move football for which they are renowned. It is a skill they will need in the Premier League and one likely to be well served by summer acquisitions.

Despite conceding the obvious point that his team are not going to win as many matches as they did last season, the League Managers Association manager of the year has promised to remain loyal to the core group of players who achieved promotion. “The dangers are you make too many changes and disrupt the team, or make too few and don’t change the group,” said Howe, with regard to his summer transfer policy. “We have to get the balance right.” There is no reason why Howe should not trust the players who have served him so well. The right-back Simon Francis and right-sided midfielder Matt Ritchie featured in the Championship team of the season, and their relatively unheralded striker Callum Wilson scored 20 league goals in 45 appearances in the last campaign.

Harry Arter, arguably Bournemouth’s stand-out player last season, chipped in with eight goals from the centre of midfield and earned a summer call-up from the Republic of Ireland, with whom he picked up a niggling injury. His leadership, composure and steel will be missed as he sits out the opening games of the season. “It is an injury where there isn’t really a timescale on it, but it’s not really long term so we will see how my body reacts to the rehab,” he said last week. “I’m hoping maybe in the next few weeks I’ll be back training properly.”

Despite the carping of cynics who see the club’s co-owner Maxim Demin as a sugar-daddy oligarch in the mould of Roman Abramovich, who has poured millions into the club since purchasing his stake for a reported £850,000, such comparisons are spurious and reflected in the fairly paltry amount spent on reinforcements for the season ahead.

Howe, citing a need to “stay British” and bring in players with “the character to deal with disappointment”, has ushered in … em, a Pole, an Australian, a Norwegian, a Ghanaian, a Frenchman and an Englishman, leading one to suspect he meant players well versed in what passes for the flow and rhythms of the English game.

In from Chelsea and Blackburn respectively, the midfielders Christian Atsu and Joshua King ought to add zip to an already quick team who will regularly find themselves attacking on the break, while Sylvain Distin will bring a wealth of potentially creaky Premier League experience to Bournemouth’s back four. There, he will be joined by the giant full-back Tyrone Mings, in from Ipswich Town, a wise head on young shoulders who is understood to have chosen Bournemouth over West Brom, Aston Villa and Newcastle on the back of a recruitment pitch from his new manager.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bournemouth have made the full-back Tyrone Mings, right, their record signing. He is understood to have chosen the club in favour of West Brom, Aston Villa and Newcastle. Photograph: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

In goal, Artur Boruc’s loan signing from Southampton has been made permanent and the famously Holy Goalie will face stiff competition for his place from Adam Federici, who arrived from Reading insisting: “I am here to play.” Of the influx, only Mings and King came with a price tag attached, with the former in for a reported club record fee of £8m, while the latter’s price will be decided by tribunal.

While it should go without saying that the gulf in class between the Championship and the Premier League is considerable, some decidedly poor teams stayed in the top flight last season. Bournemouth may be even-money shots to be relegated but their fans are entitled to have every confidence that, over the course of a season, at least three teams will secure fewer points. Assuming they can hold on to Howe, they clearly have something of a special one in their thoughtful, meticulous, workaholic young manager. And in their compact ground, they boast a potential mini-fortress where several big upsets could unfold.