It's the hope that kills you...
Hope springs eternal before the start of every season, of course and the Sky Blue Army will be hoping that Coventry can kick on from the near misses in two out of the last three seasons and finally make it back to the promised land.
For an extra boost, it's good to see some of the "experts" in the national press tipping City for promotion. Of the five sports writers in the Daily Telegraph putting their predictions down in print, two go for the Sky Blues for automatic promotion. Interestingly, all five reckon Ipswich will bounce back at the first attempt with Birmingham, Sheffield United and Southampton getting the nod from the other pundits.
Did someone say the @EFL is back? 😜
— Coventry City (@Coventry_City) August 7, 2025
If you can't make it in person, watch our season opener live on Sky Sports+ #EFLisBack pic.twitter.com/q40k9BjPP4
Ben Fisher, writing in yesterday's Guardian, includes Coventry in his list of automatic promotion contenders, albeit it is quite a long list including all three relegated teams (Ipswich, Leicester & Southampton) as well as Birmingham & Sheffield United.
Ben identifies the arrival of goalie Carl Rushworth (on loan from Brighton) as a key acquisition but reckons (reasonably enough) that we need a prolific goalscorer. Perhaps the money from Gyokeres' move to Arsenal will help Frank find a good 'un.
In other outlets, the Independent have apparently got rid of all their sports writers and rely on the bookies with Coventry 12/1 (fifth favourites) to win the Championship behind (in order) Ipswich, Southampton, Birmingham & Sheffield United.
The supercomputers at Opta have predicted the whole table with similar but different outcomes to the pundits. The machine crunched though 10,000 pre-season simulations and predicts that Coventry will come 4th behind Sheffield United, Leicester and Ipswich in that order.
Of course, we only thing we know for sure is that the reality is bound to be different with a number of "dark horses" featuring in the top six at different moments in the season. It's good to see that the EFL fixture generator has given us a nice opener this evening Birmingham at home to Ipswich.
Coventry host Hull City for our season opener. Hull are predicted by Opta to finish 17th so obviously a win is in the bag...
