Coventry Lose Fourth Straight Without Scoring — SkimNews
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- Coventry City have lost all four of their opening Premier League matches without scoring, their worst start to a season since 1919-20 when they lost their first nine league matches.
- Their latest defeat was a 5-0 home thrashing by Brighton, after which Taiwo Awoniyi was sent off for a flailing elbow, compounding the collapse shortly after half-time.
- The Sky Blues are only the fifth team in English top-flight history to lose each of their opening four matches while failing to score, following Derby County (1899-1900), Stoke City (1906-07), Preston North End (1924-25) and Crystal Palace (2017-18).
- Coventry have now lost 46 consecutive Premier League matches when conceding first, a run stretching back to March 1999.
- Frank Lampard won only four of his last 34 top-flight matches as manager of Chelsea and Everton before being appointed at Coventry, where he masterminded promotion from the Championship in under 18 months.
- Since the Premier League began in 1992, only Southampton in 2012-13 has survived relegation after losing their first four matches, and 10 of the 18 teams in the wider English top-flight history to do so have gone down (56%).
- Wayne Rooney told BBC Sport the 5-0 margin "takes all the confidence away from the players," while Roy Keane said on Sky Sports that some of Coventry's decision-making at 3-0 "start looking like a Championship team."
Why it matters: Only one team since 1992 — Southampton in 2012-13 — has survived relegation after losing their first four matches, and Coventry are just the fifth side in English top-flight history to lose four straight while failing to score. Lampard faces a squad losing belief, having won just four of his last 34 top-flight matches at Chelsea and Everton.
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