Zero and zero
Four Premier League games. No points. No goals. Coventry City sit alone at the bottom of the table and the season is barely a month old.
Frank Lampard took them up as Championship champions, back in the top flight for the first time since 2001, and the mood around the club through August was close to giddy. It has not survived contact with the division.
Two of the four defeats came away at Arsenal and Manchester City. Nobody was counting on points from those. Coventry were decent at the Etihad and could reasonably feel they left with less than the performance deserved. The other two sting. A 1-0 home loss to fellow promoted side Hull City, then a 5-0 hiding by Brighton at the Coventry Building Society Arena on Sunday.
Taiwo Awoniyi was sent off in the second half of that one, though his team were two down by then. And when Lewis Dunk is bending a shot into the top corner from 30 yards, the afternoon has already made up its mind.
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Eight promoted sides have started like this
Coventry are the eighth promoted team to lose their opening four matches of a Premier League season. Seven went before them. Six were relegated. Only Southampton, in 2012-13, climbed out.
Widen the net and the numbers soften. Counting every club, promoted or not, 18 teams had lost their first four before this season. Eight of them stayed up, Everton as recently as 2024-25.
The precedent Lampard might actually want is Crystal Palace in 2017-18. Frank de Boer’s side went five games without a point or a goal, De Boer went, and the run stretched to seven before Roy Hodgson stopped it. Palace finished 11th that season.
The warning sits right next to it. Portsmouth also opened a campaign with seven pointless matches, in 2009-10, then finished bottom on 19 points. They would have finished bottom without their nine-point administration penalty too. Norwich lost their first six in 2021-22 and went down with 22.
Forest next
Coventry travel to Nottingham Forest at the weekend. A point there would not move them far up the table, but it would stop the counter, and right now that matters more than the arithmetic.
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