Hull City Start Premier League Season with Two Wins
Ollie McBurnie walked through the mixed zone with a grin and a barb ready.
"To say we're the worst team in Premier League history, it's not a bad start from the boys," he said, the joke aimed squarely at those who had written Hull City off before a ball was kicked.
Two games in, two wins. First Manchester United. Now Coventry City. Hull’s return to the Premier League has started not with panic, but with purpose.
Tigers bare their teeth
This was nothing like the opening-day surge that floored United. At the CBS Arena, Hull had to grind. They had to suffer. And they had to wait.
Liam Millar, off the bench and on the move, finally broke Coventry hearts with an 82nd-minute winner that turned an awkward, attritional afternoon into something far more significant: early-season momentum, and a statement to a supposed relegation rival.
"We don't feel we have anything to prove to anyone. No-one has given us the Premier League, we have all earned it," McBurnie said afterwards. "We're there on merit, we deserve to be there, we don't have anything to prove to anyone. It's been a great start."
The away end had already made up its mind. "We're going to win the league," they sang, half-serious, half in disbelief at what they were watching.
Fanciful? Of course. But history at least offers a curious comfort. Only three teams have ever been relegated from the top flight after winning their first two games – Wolves in 2011-12, West Brom in 2017-18 and Hull themselves in 2016-17. The warning is there, but so is the platform.
This time, the Tigers look more built for the division.
Semi Ajayi was immense at the back, a commanding presence who repeatedly shut down Coventry’s forays and left the hosts running out of ideas. In front of him, Nobel Mendy and Lucas Gourna-Douath imposed themselves physically and territorially, towering over a Sky Blues midfield that saw plenty of the ball but did little with it. McBurnie, meanwhile, never stopped pestering, backing in, contesting everything, refusing to let Coventry settle.
Hull are the first promoted side in nine years to win their first two Premier League games, the last being Huddersfield Town when they beat Crystal Palace and Newcastle in 2017. The Terriers stayed up by four points that season. For Sergej Jakirovic, that kind of survival margin remains the realistic aim, even if the table currently shows Hull sitting second.
This wasn’t a performance to decorate a highlights reel. For long spells, it was flat. Hull struggled to create, and frustration surfaced. When Mendy was withdrawn on the hour, the club’s record signing reacted with visible irritation, throwing his hands up and pulling his shirt over his head as he trudged off.
But as the minutes ticked by, something shifted. Coventry had almost 70% of the ball, yet Hull’s defensive structure held. The more the Sky Blues probed without reward, the more their anxiety grew – and the more Hull began to believe that one chance might be enough.
"The longer the game was 0-0 the pressure was more on them to win the game. A draw was not a bad result for us," McBurnie admitted. In the end, they got far more than that.
Coventry’s dream start turns into a jolt
For Coventry, back in the top flight after 25 long years, this was not how the script was supposed to read.
The anticipation had been building since promotion was sealed. A fanbase had waited a generation for days like this. Instead, they have walked straight into the hard edge of Premier League reality: two games, two defeats, and a reminder that sentiment counts for nothing at this level.
The 3-0 loss at Arsenal on the opening weekend was understandable, almost expected. Champions away. The emotion of the occasion. The gulf in class. This, though, was different. A home fixture against another promoted side, slotted between trips to Arsenal and Manchester City, had been ringed in red as an early opportunity to put points on the board.
They took nothing.
Owner Doug King watched from the stands as the clock drained away and his team failed to muster a response to Millar’s late strike. The Sky Blues were busy, but blunt. Seven of the starting XI had also begun the 0-0 draw with Hull that opened last season’s Championship campaign. This time, the margin for error was slimmer, and the punishment harsher.
Frank Lampard saw the nerves.
"This season was always going to be very different to last season but I sensed a bit of edge, that quality of pass and playing safe rather than play forward," he said. "Maybe that is apprehension."
"I don't like the excuse of it. Last week that was valid because of the level of opposition, the occasion, 25 years out and a lot of debuts. We shouldn't use it as an excuse today.
It's a game against a team we played twice last year and we finished a lot of points above them. The Premier League gives that edge and we will have to get used to that and quickly.
The lesson is don't expect anything in the Premier League. It depends how much you want it to be (a mental blow). There are 36 games left, we're two games in. It depends how you want to react to defeats."
Coventry’s attacking swagger has deserted them for now. They scored 97 goals on their way to the Championship title last season, but two games into this campaign they are still searching for their first Premier League point and rhythm. The absence of Haji Wright, sidelined for weeks with a thigh injury, has stripped them of a key weapon at precisely the wrong time.
There is at least one crumb of comfort. Ten promoted sides have lost their first two Premier League matches and still stayed up, most recently Aston Villa in 2019-20. The precedent is there. The challenge is to match it.
Ashley Williams, who knows the terrain from his own promotion and survival fight with Swansea in 2011, warned of the psychological damage defeats like this can inflict.
"They blitzed the Championship last year and were full of confidence coming into the season. But after two defeats everything suddenly becomes that much harder," he said on BBC’s Final Score.
"As players, you look at the table and it's not nice when you are at the wrong end of it. Straight away they'll see they are already six points behind Hull and that's a real kick in the teeth.
All those little doubts start to kick in so they've got to get to work and figure it out fast and I'm sure Frank Lampard will do that. However, Manchester City away next up is far from ideal."
Hull leave with six points, belief swelling and critics temporarily silenced. Coventry head to the Etihad already feeling the weight of the league. Two games down, 36 to go – and already the margins feel brutally clear.
