Chelsea heavy favourites as unbeaten Hull City visit Stamford Bridge

Chelsea host Hull City at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, 12 September, kicking off at 14:00 UTC alongside four other Gameweek 4 fixtures. The market has already delivered its verdict, and it is emphatic.

The market's verdict

Bookmakers price Chelsea at 1.25, with the draw at 6.0 and a Hull win at 12.2. In bookmaker-derived probability terms, that reads 76 per cent for a Chelsea victory, 16 per cent for the draw and 8 per cent for the visitors. According to the match odds across the gameweek, no side on the Gameweek 4 card is priced shorter than Chelsea's 1.25.

Those are probabilities, not predictions — but the market's confidence in the home side could hardly be clearer.

Form check: third visits fourth

According to the Premier League table, this is a meeting of third against fourth — and it is the visitors who sit third. Hull City have taken seven points from three matches, winning two and drawing one for an unbeaten start. They are the only club in the division yet to concede a goal: three scored, none against. Their form line reads DWW, sharpened by back-to-back wins.

Chelsea's start has been livelier and looser. Six points from three games and a form line of LWW — an opening defeat repaired by two straight wins — with eight goals scored, more than any other side in the top four, and seven conceded. No top-ten side has let in more.

The tension between those two datasets is the making of this fixture. The market says Chelsea, emphatically; the table says Hull's start has been the stronger of the two.

FanTribe points on offer

FanTribe's points on offer for this fixture track the market's confidence:

• Chelsea win: 25 points
• Draw: 120 points
• Hull City win: 244 points

That 244-point payout for an away win is the largest single points figure available anywhere on the Gameweek 4 card, according to FanTribe's data — a measure of how far outside the market's thinking a Hull victory currently sits.

What to watch

• Hull's shut-out record: three matches without conceding, per the Premier League table, against a Chelsea attack with eight goals in three games.
• Chelsea's backline: seven goals conceded already, the leakiest record in the top ten.
• Momentum: both sides arrive on two straight wins.

However the odds frame it, Stamford Bridge on Saturday will host a team that has neither lost nor conceded this season. An 8 per cent bookmaker-derived probability is the market's judgement on Hull's trip; the Premier League table's judgement on their start is rather more flattering.