Coventry City and Hull City came up together last season and were handed just about the worst possible openers to go with it, though only one of them seemed to mind. Coventry went to Arsenal on the Friday night and lost 3-0 without laying a glove on the champions, while Hull got Manchester United at home the following lunchtime and beat them 2-0.

That is the backdrop to Saturday afternoon at the Coventry Building Society Arena, where the market makes the Sky Blues 17/20 favourites and pushes the draw out to 5/2.

Market	Odds
Coventry City win	17/20
Draw	5/2
Hull City win	3/1
Coventry 1-1 Hull (correct score)	11/2

Odds correct at the time of writing and subject to change. Prices vary between bookmakers.

Coventry’s numbers at the Emirates were grim by any reading, with 35 per cent of the ball, one shot on target, four touches in the Arsenal box and an expected goals figure of 0.28.

But an opening night at the champions is close to the least useful sample you could ask for, and Frank Lampard said as much afterwards when he called it a lesson in the levels rather than a verdict on his players. He won the Championship with this squad, Haji Wright scored 17 league goals in the process, and none of that stopped being true because Kai Havertz had a comfortable evening.

Hull’s result is harder to wave away, largely because of how it arrived. Both goals came from Regan Slater deliveries, Semi Ajayi bundling in a corner and Nobel Mendy heading home a free-kick, and a promoted side that defends its own box the way Hull did tends to keep on doing it.

Sergej Jakirovic came up through the play-offs rather than over a full season and was written off by most people before a ball was kicked, so there is an argument he simply caught United on a bad afternoon. The underlying numbers, with Hull recording 1.26 expected goals to United’s 1.81, suggest something a bit more solid than that.

Either way, neither result tells you much about this one. Arsenal away and Manchester United at home are outliers, and the more useful evidence is what these two clubs actually do to each other.

They have never met in the top flight, but they saw plenty of one another in the Championship and it was consistently uneventful. Both meetings last season finished goalless.

Coventry have won one of their last nine league games against Hull and drawn five, five of the last seven have finished level, and Hull have lost only one of their last eight away trips to this ground.

Coventry vs Hull prediction

Coventry are probably the better side across 38 games and 17/20 is a fair enough reflection of that. The trouble is that a season-long judgement is not much use in a single fixture against an opponent they have repeatedly failed to break down.

There is a weight to August games between promoted sides that both managers will feel, because losing here costs more than losing at Arsenal did, and that is exactly the sort of thing that produces a cagey afternoon.

Hull arrive with a settled shape, a set-piece routine that has already done for a top-six defence, and a record at this ground that says they travel without much fear, while Coventry are still working out what their attacking game looks like at this level.

The draw at 5/2 is the bet, and anyone wanting a bigger return from the same reasoning can take Coventry 1-1 Hull at 11/2.

Kick-off is 3pm on Saturday 29 August, which means no live UK television coverage under the Saturday blackout, though highlights follow in the evening.

Our football section has the TV listings for everything that is being shown, and the next manager odds page tracks the sack race markets that start moving quickly once promoted sides drop points.