Opening a Premier League season away to the defending champions and title favorites would be something to fear for most promoted teams.
For Coventry, it’s purely something to celebrate.
Over the past 15 years, the club from central England has had to deal with being placed into liquidation amid a long fight with hated owners, plunging into the fourth tier of the English game, and also losing its home — thereby necessitating a groundshare with three different teams located within 40 miles (64 kilometers).
Now Coventry is back in the top division after a 25-year absence.
The message to Arsenal on Friday: Bring it on.
“It was a great year for us and the celebrations were great — it went beyond football in this city,” Coventry manager Frank Lampard said of the team’s promotion to the Premier League. “It went to a place where the city and football club went through tough times so it heightened the feeling of what was achieved. I’m very excited to be here and get a club that’s been out of the Premier League for 25 years and get them back in. It is exciting at this moment but we want to challenge and do well.”
Arsenal vs. Coventry will be the first of 380 games in a season that is starting later than usual because of the elongated World Cup and is hard to predict because of the raft of managerial changes in the offseason – not least the departure of Pep Guardiola after 10 era-defining years at Manchester City.
There appears to be one constant: the new-found stability and belief at Arsenal, which flexed its muscles on Sunday by swatting aside City in the Community Shield.
It therefore promises to be a tough start for Coventry – if a joyful one at the same time.
The standout fixture might be Newcastle hosting Liverpool on Sunday. They are among the nine teams starting the Premier League season with a new coach.
Newcastle's progress will be interesting, given the Saudi-controlled team has lost three key players in Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali in the offseason — a year after selling Alexander Isak to Liverpool. Isak is expected to get a hot reception at St. James' Park.
It's also the start of a new era at Etihad Stadium when Man City hosts Bournemouth later Sunday. It's Enzo Maresca's first league match in charge of City as Guardiola's replacement, while City will have to get used to life without Rodri after the Spain star's move to Barcelona.
Premier League clubs' spending on new players is approaching $3 billion already in the summer transfer window so watch out for debuts by the most expensive of the recruits. Morgan Rogers ($156 million) in Chelsea's match at Fulham on Monday, Elliot Anderson ($155 million) for City against Bournemouth, and Tonali ($133 million) for Tottenham at Brentford.
An under-the-radar signing might be Greece winger Christos Tzolis, who joined Arsenal from Club Brugge. He has looked sharp in preseason, including picking up two assists in the Community Shield.
Certain to be missing for Arsenal's opening match of its title defense is France center back William Saliba, who is a long-term absentee because of a back injury.
Liverpool will not only be starting a season without Mohamed Salah for the first time in a decade, but is still missing striker Hugo Ekitike as he recovers from Achilles tendon damage.
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
FILE - Arsenal's manager Mikel Arteta is thrown in the air by the players celebrating their Premier League title after the English Premier League soccer match between Crystal Palace and Arsenal in London, England, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
FILE - Coventry City head coach Frank Lampard, July 18, 2026. (James Holyoak/PA via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A rise in oil prices on Thursday is sending worries about inflation and yields in the bond market higher, erasing some of the relief the U.S. Treasury Department created the day before. A drop for Walmart following its latest profit report also helped drag the U.S. stock market lower.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% and is on track for a fourth loss in the five days since setting its all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 305 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.
The bond market remains the center of action after yields charged higher through the summer on worries about high inflation, gargantuan government debts and other factors. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a move Wednesday that jolted financial markets to at least double the size of his department’s planned purchases of longer-term Treasurys from Sept. 9 through Nov. 4.
That helped push yields down after the 10-year Treasury’s yield had hit its highest level in more than a year and the 30-year yield got back to where it was in 2007, before the Great Recession sent yields toward zero worldwide. It’s a big deal because high yields slow the economy by raising interest payments for people, companies and the government and can undercut prices for stocks and other investments.
But analysts had cautioned the effect may be short lived, given how small the purchases are relative to the overall size of the Treasury market and other factors. Plus, more signals arrived quickly to push the bond market’s worries higher.
The U.S. government’s debt topped $40 trillion on Wednesday, a staggering record that arrived just months after the national debt first blew past the $39 trillion mark in April, because Washington continues to spend far more money than it brings in.
And on Thursday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude climbed 2.4% to $93.83 as uncertainty continues about when the war with Iran will allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again. President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” late Wednesday but provided few details.
That helped push the 10-year Treasury up to 4.69% from 4.65% late Wednesday. It’s almost back to its 4.71% level from late Tuesday, before the Treasury Department made its announcement.
A couple encouraging reports on the U.S. economy also helped push up longer-term Treasury yields, which move with expectations for the economy and inflation in coming years. One said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, while another said manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region appears to be much stronger than expected.
On Wall Street, Walmart was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 lower and fell 7.5% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors focused more instead on how an important underlying measure of revenue growth at its stores slowed again. Its forecast for profit in the current quarter also fell short of analysts’ expectations.
Advance Auto Parts tumbled 19.8% after the retailer reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter, even though its profit topped expectations. CEO Shane O’Kelly said that “tighter household budgets constrained spending more than we anticipated, especially during the last four weeks of the quarter.”
Helping to keep Wall Street’s losses in check was Deere, which reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It rose 3.6% as the company said order trends indicate the agriculture equipment business looks set to accelerate after this year.
In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.
South Korea’s Kospi soared 5.9% for one of the world’s biggest moves after the two tech titans that dominate its market, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, jumped.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.
Options traders Chris Dattolo, Scott Frinzi, and Ravi Bhandari, left to right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Options trader Anthony Spina works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Options traders Chris Dattolo, Scott Frinzi, Justin Kanda, and Ravi Bhandari, left to right, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Staff arrange an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
