This Week: An accomplished finish

Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called This Week on Premier Skills English.

In This Week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

The words and phrases I want to talk about today are a hostile reception, to botch, to halve the deficit, an accomplished finish, in the red, to thrash, fatigue and to relish an opportunity.

Listen out for these phrases in the headlines and stories.

After each story there will be a short language focus and then there will be a task for you to complete and then at the end of the podcast there will be a new football phrase.

But before that, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

For the next few weeks, I am going to test you with idioms that come from the world of football that are used in general English. The first phrase was to **** *** *********.

This means to unfairly change the rules or a game or the conditions of some sort of competition after it has already started. So you might complain if you agree to buy something and the seller changes the price and asks for more money by saying you’re ****** *** *********.

Congratulations to Wilson 2103 who was first again. Well done to Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Amalkhalafallah from Egypt, welcome to Premier Skills English Amalkhalafallah! Well done to Sabanoleg from Ukraine, Goku from Japan, Hermosillo Moreno from Mexico, Taher Koshen from Somalia, and Mehmet Sisman from Turkey. It really was a tricky one last week. Well done for trying Hsn and Renan, but you were not quite there this week. The phrase I was looking for was to move the goalposts.

I think that today’s phrase is another tricky one, but I hope that you all have a go, even if you’re not sure you’re right.

OK now it’s time to get on with this week’s three football stories!

Brighton overwhelm Chelsea

Graham Potter’s return to his old club Brighton was a bit of a disaster for the Blues. Chelsea were on a nine-match unbeaten run when they travelled to the south coast on Saturday. The team were given a hostile reception with plenty of booing, though this was mostly directed at the manager.

When the match got underway Brighton were electric. They swarmed into Chelsea’s end from kick off and only Tiago Silva stopped early on-target attempts from Trossard and Estupinan. However he wasn’t there for Trossard’s second attempt which found the inside of the net after only 4 minutes.

When play restarted, Brighton continued to overwhelm Chelsea’s midfield. Potter had botched his tactics and committed too many players in attack. Once Estupinan and Mitouma got past Pulisic, there simply wasn’t enough defence to stop them and Chelsea looked distressed and soon went another goal down when Loftus-Cheek’s attempted block inadvertently cannoned into his own goal.

When Chelsea were on the attack, they still looked dangerous. Pulisic missed a golden chance to halve the deficit when he skewed a shot on an open goal wide.

Estupinan rightly celebrated the team’s third goal which came from a perfectly timed run and cross that would have been tapped in by Mitouma had Chaloba not come sliding in, in a failed attempt to clear, and knocking the ball in himself.

At half time, Potter abandoned the failed tactics of the first half and strengthened the Chelsea defence and Kai Havertz got a goal back just after the break. The Blues' new formation did better at containing Brighton, but they never really got back into the match. Potter’s tactical blunder gifted his old club their first ever league win against Chelsea.

Final score: Brighton and Hove Albion 4 - Chelsea 1

The words and phrases I want to talk about from this story are a hostile reception, to botch and to halve the deficit.

The word reception comes from the verb to receive. When you arrive at a building, perhaps a school or a hotel, the place where you enter or where you are received is the reception. We also use the word for an official party, most commonly for the party after a wedding. I think that receptions are held to honour visiting presidents and important people. The third use and the use from the story means a type of welcome. You can have a friendly reception, which means you were welcomed in a friendly way or a mixed reception if not everyone was happy to meet you or as was the case on Saturday, a hostile reception. Hostile means really unfriendly. You sometimes hear news stories about a hostile crowd, meaning a lot of angry people but I think the most common collocation is a hostile reception.

The verb to botch something means to do something really badly; usually so badly that you have basically failed to do it, your attempt has gone wrong. The dictionary suggested that bodged has the same meaning, but for me, a bodged job is a successful job that was done in a really lazy and unprofessional way. If your tap is leaking, you could either replace the tap or washer or you could wrap in loads of plumber’s tape. Wrapping it in tape is a bit of a bodge. It might stop the leak for a bit, but it’s not the proper way to fix the problem. If you botch it, I think that your fix won’t work at all.

I’ve included the phrase to halve the deficit because I heard it several times this weekend. To halve something means to cut it in half. In numbers, it means to divide it in two. SO if you halve 8, you have 4. If you halve 4 you have 2. The noun deficit is normally used to talk about money. In fact, this word is used a lot at the moment in politics. You see the deficit is the difference in the money you spend and the money you earn or receive if you spend more than you receive. I don’t think we normally talk about this when we’re talking about our personal finances ... just about government and big organisation’s budgets. In football, if a team concedes more goals than it scores, the difference is the deficit. So when Pulisic had a chance to halve the deficit, it was because Chelsea were two goals down; they had a two goal deficit. If Pulisic had scored, he would have halved the deficit.

Let’s move on to the next story.

Sensational Spurs come back from two down

It was a bright start for Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday. Spurs possession play looked slow and unfocused which made the Cherries look deadly on the counter and Tottenham’s keeper Hugo Lloris had more work to do in the opening minutes that he’d have liked.

Halfway through the first half on yet another lightning counter, Kieffer Moore scored his first goal of the season when he connected with a fine ball by Marcus Tavernier and delivered an accomplished finish.

Four minutes into the second half, Bournemouth struck again. Adam Smith played a quality cross into the box which was met once more by Moore, this time with a beautiful diving header.

With two in the red approaching the hour mark, Conte urged his players forward. There was never any hint of resignation and when Hojberg saw a gap in the Bournemouth defence he pounced. Sessegnon spotted it before the defenders and timed his run perfectly, scoring with a fine finish.

Spurs levelled the scores from the corner when Mark Travers misread the ball and was off his line when the ball dipped for Ben Davies who netted with a header.

Bournemouth kept fighting and if the game had finished 2-2 I think everyone would have been satisfied ... However, in added time, Spurs won a corner which Son Heung-min delivered with some force into the wall of red and black shirts where it rebounded and fell perfectly for Bentancur who calmly chipped it into the net over the heads of the Bournemouth wall.

Final score: AFC Bournemouth 2 - Tottenham Hotspur 3

The phrases I want to talk about from this story are an accomplished finish and in the red.

In football English, a finish is an attempt on goal; usually a strike. So what is an accomplished finish? The adjective accomplished means skilled or skilful. But I think it’s normally used for skills that are difficult to master so we talk about accomplished musicians because it is hard to become skilful at playing an instrument. I’m not sure if you’ll find it in the dictionary definition, but I see the connection with the word accomplishment which means an achievement that took a lot of work or skill. So you can feel proud of your accomplishments and if one of them involved learning a complex skill like learning an instrument or to dance or play football well than you can be called an accomplished musician or dancer or footballer. So an accomplished finish is a skilful finish that could only be performed by someone who had trained hard to learn the skill.

The other phrase I want to look at is in the red. This is another phrase that’s normally used to talk about money. This phrase comes from the old practice of marking debts in a ledger in red ink. So when a number is red, it indicates a debt. You can also say that a company is in the black when it is making a profit. It’s not all that common in football English, but the use is quite straightforward. When I said that Spurs had two in the red, I meant that they were two goals down, they had a two goal deficit.

It’s time to move on to the final story.

Arsenal thrash Nottingham Forest

Arsenal went back to the top of the league table when they thrashed Forest at the Emirates on Sunday. Some commentators had warned that the Gunners would be tired after their European football on Thursday, but there was no sign of any fatigue in the performance of the team. Given that Forest travelled to London on the back of a win against Liverpool,

Arsenal may have expected the Tricky Trees to put up more of a fight, but it was an incredibly one-sided match.

Arsenal opened the scoring at just five minutes after a confident fast-paced exchange between Saka and Martinelli. Saka curled in a swift cross that found Martinelli’s head on the way into the net. After a heavy fall, Saka was limping and was quickly substituted off. Reiss Nelson, who joined Arsenal Academy when he was nine and made the first team back in 2017 and has spent the last year on loan at Feyenoord was brought on in his place and relished the opportunity, scoring 2 goals within 3 minutes and making the assist for Arsenal’s fourth by setting up Thomas Partey who delivered with a thunderbolt strike.

Final score: Arsenal 5 - Nottingham Forest 0

The words and phrases I want to talk about from this story are To thrash, fatigue and to relish an opportunity

To thrash somebody means to beat somebody by a great margin. It’s most commonly used to talk about sports and games. For example, my wife can thrash me at chess. She doesn’t just beat me, she takes all my pieces and humiliates me. You can use the verb thrash to mean hit someone or an animal repeatedly, but this is less common these days as animals and children are not beaten as frequently as they were in the past.

The noun fatigue means tiredness. It’s quite formal and sounds like the way a doctor might say you need some rest: you are suffering from fatigue. I think it means that someone is so tired that they are not able to act normally. They might not be able to do their job or drive safely when they are suffering from fatigue. So if Arsenal’s performance was not as energetic as normal because they were tired following their midweek fixture, that could have been blamed on fatigue.

The last phrase I want to talk about today is to relish an opportunity. To relish something means to like or enjoy something. I think we often use it to talk about our thoughts. So you might relish the thought of something or you might relish the prospect of something happening. If somebody gives you the chance to do something, and you are really happy about that, you relish the chance or relish the opportunity. One strong collocation is to relish the challenge. If you have a really difficult job to do, but you are excited about it, especially because it’s difficult then you relish the challenge you are faced with.
OK. That’s eight words and phrases from the stories today. Listen to the stories again to hear the language in context.

Brighton overwhelm Chelsea

Graham Potter’s return to his old club Brighton was a bit of a disaster for the Blues. Chelsea were on a nine-match unbeaten run when they travelled to the south coast on Saturday. The team were given a hostile reception with plenty of booing, though this was mostly directed at the manager.

When the match got underway Brighton were electric. They swarmed into Chelsea’s end from kick off and only Tiago Silva stopped early on-target attempts from Trossard and Estupinan. However he wasn’t there for Trossard’s second attempt which found the inside of the net after only 4 minutes.

When play restarted, Brighton continued to overwhelm Chelsea’s midfield. Potter had botched his tactics and committed too many players in attack. Once Estupinan and Mitouma got past Pulisic, there simply wasn’t enough defence to stop them and Chelsea looked distressed and soon went another goal down when Loftus-Cheek’s attempted block inadvertently cannoned into his own goal.

When Chelsea were on the attack, they still looked dangerous. Pulisic missed a golden chance to halve the deficit when he skewed a shot on an open goal wide.

Estupinan rightly celebrated the team’s third goal which came from a perfectly timed run and cross that would have been tapped in by Mitouma had Chaloba not come sliding in, in a failed attempt to clear, and knocking the ball in himself.

At half time, Potter abandoned the failed tactics of the first half and strengthened the Chelsea defence and Kai Havertz got a goal back just after the break. The Blues' new formation did better at containing Brighton, but they never really got back into the match. Potter’s tactical blunder gifted his old club their first ever league win against Chelsea.

Final score: Brighton and Hove Albion 4 - Chelsea 1

Sensational Spurs come back from two down

It was a bright start for Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday. Spurs possession play looked slow and unfocused which made the Cherries look deadly on the counter and Tottenham’s keeper Hugo Lloris had more work to do in the opening minutes that he’d have liked.

Halfway through the first half on yet another lightning counter, Kieffer Moore scored his first goal of the season when he connected with a fine ball by Marcus Tavernier and delivered an accomplished finish.

Four minutes into the second half, Bournemouth struck again. Adam Smith played a quality cross into the box which was met once more by Moore, this time with a beautiful diving header.

With two in the red approaching the hour mark, Conte urged his players forward. There was never any hint of resignation and when Hojberg saw a gap in the Bournemouth defence he pounced. Sessegnon spotted it before the defenders and timed his run perfectly, scoring with a fine finish.

Spurs levelled the scores from the corner when Mark Travers misread the ball and was off his line when the ball dipped for Ben Davies who netted with a header.

Bournemouth kept fighting and if the game had finished 2-2 I think everyone would have been satisfied ... However, in added time, Spurs won a corner which Son Heung-min delivered with some force into the wall of red and black shirts where it rebounded and fell perfectly for Bentancur who calmly chipped it into the net over the heads of the Bournemouth wall.

Final score: AFC Bournemouth 2 - Tottenham Hotspur 3

Arsenal thrash Nottingham Forest

Arsenal went back to the top of the league table when they thrashed Forest at the Emirates on Sunday. Some commentators had warned that the Gunners would be tired after their European football on Thursday, but there was no sign of any fatigue in the performance of the team. Given that Forest travelled to London on the back of a win against Liverpool,

Arsenal may have expected the Tricky Trees to put up more of a fight, but it was an incredibly one-sided match.

Arsenal opened the scoring at just five minutes after a confident fast-paced exchange between Saka and Martinelli. Saka curled in a swift cross that found Martinelli’s head on the way into the net. After a heavy fall, Saka was limping and was quickly substituted off. Reiss Nelson, who joined Arsenal Academy when he was nine and made the first team back in 2017 and has spent the last year on loan at Feyenoord was brought on in his place and relished the opportunity, scoring 2 goals within 3 minutes and making the assist for Arsenal’s fourth by setting up Thomas Partey who delivered with a thunderbolt strike.

Final score: Arsenal 5 - Nottingham Forest 0

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again.

Here are 8 sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the correct form of the words and phrases from this podcast. For some of these, I have not used the complete phrase so you may have to use part of the language from the stories.

Number 1: I tried to replace the window myself but completely ________ it and had to call in a glazier.

Number 2: The council is having to cut its spending as its _________ has doubled over the last year.

Number 3: The fans gave the team an incredible _________ when they returned to their home ground.

Number 4: He didn’t like to talk about it at work, but he was also an ___________ saxophonist and played with a band in his free time.

Number 5: It was humiliating. They absolutely ________ us.

Number 6: The rise in energy costs is pushing lots of small businesses _______________.

Number 7: I can’t keep on going. I need to take a break. I’m really starting to suffer from ________.

Number 8: I do not _________ the idea of getting up early to catch the first train to London, but ...

Leave your answers in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website and I will go through them next week.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week’s football phrase.

I am going to test you again with another idiom that comes from the world of football and has found its way into general English. Today’s phrase is to **** *** ******* ** somebody.

This means to tell people about something bad that someone or more often some organisation is doing. We also use the noun *************, which I suppose could have been referee if we’d kept with the metaphor. So if you work for a company and you discover that they are breaking the law. If you tell a newspaper, you are ******* *** ******* ** your company.

If you know the answer, be sure to leave it in a comment on the page for this podcast on Premier Skills English.

Before I finish, here are the answers to last week’s language challenge.

Number 1: When the polls closed, the final tally showed that only one candidate had enough supporters to proceed.

Number 2: Actors and filmmakers have spoken out in the media to pay tribute to the Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane who died last week.

Number 3: Last year, there was no pressure because we had nothing to lose, but this year we have something to prove.

Number 4: We’ve had a great run of games, but to cap it all off by beating our derby rivals was really special.

Number 5: The defender was told to stop the giant midfielder but in the end was battered into submission.

Number 6: The new signing has played a massive part in the club's change of fortune.

Number 7: How can I get over my insecurity at work after being denied promotion again and again?

Number 8: The company takeover looks set to go ahead and the new buyers are on track to sign before the end of the month.

Number 9: The new government policy does not support the most vulnerable people in society.

That’s all I have time for today. Before I finish, I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast useful, and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.