This Week: Luton Town Football Club

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 premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org 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.

Today, I want to talk about the newest club to join the Premier League. It’s not a new club, it has a very long history, but this coming season will be the club’s first with the Premier League logo on the kit.

The club I’m going to talk about is Luton Town Football Club. Luton Town have climbed all the way from the fifth tier of English football to the Premier League and one of their players has been on board for the whole journey which must be some kind of record and worthy of a Netflix Series.

But before I get to the story and the vocabulary, I want to give you the answer to last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week, the football phrase was a ***** *****. This means that a team has not conceded a goal in a match. I said that David De Gea was awarded this year’s Golden Glove award for 17 ***** ******. Sports reporters used to record the scores for a match on paper. I guess they used different pieces of paper for each team. If they got to the end of a match without having to mark the paper with any goals, then the team would have a ***** *****. That’s what it said on a BBC article about the phrase, anyway.

Congratulations to Hayato from Japan, Satt from Japan, GlitchifyVN from Vietnam, Welcome to Premier Skills English GlitchifyVN. Congratulations to Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Ken from Japan, Hasan from Turkey, Renan from Brazil, Chen Meng Tso from Taiwan, Alex from Ukraine, Denis2000 from Belarus, Sisman74 from Turkey, Takateeto from Japan, Welcome to the site Takateeto and lastly congratulations to Isshin from Japan.

You all worked out that the phrase I was looking for was clean sheet. Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now it’s time for this week’s story. There’s only one this week and it’s quite long so I do advise you to visit the Premier Skills English website and click on the transcript so you can read and listen at the same time.

The vocabulary from the story that I’m going to talk about today is:

• To be founded
• To have trouble doing something
• Current
• Residential
• Connection
• Rivals
• Successive
• To form
• Appearance
• To be set to do something

If you want to read and listen at the same time, there’s a transcript on the page for this podcast on the Premier Skills English website as well as the language challenge and football phrase.

When you listen, I’d like you to answer the following question?

Which player has been promoted four times with Luton Town?

Luton Town Football Club

Luton Town Football Club are based in Luton which is in Bedfordshire in England about 30 miles north of London. Luton is a large town with a population of 286,000. The town was founded by the Anglo-Saxons in the 6th century on the banks of the river Lea. In the 17th Century, the town became a centre for hat making and in the 1930s, the town was producing 70 million hats per year. Today, there are still a handful of hat makers, but the hat making district has been developed into a creative quarter and the old factories have been taken over by filmmakers, architects, artisans and artists.

Today, Luton is best known for having an international airport. It’s often called London Luton Airport, but it’s actually 30 miles from London. The other thing that Luton is famous for is its football club.

Luton Town Football Club was founded in 1885 from the best players from several local teams including the Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior. In 1891, Luton became the first fully professional club in southern England and was a founding member of the Southern Football League and then the United League and then the Football League.

Luton Town’s original ground was at Dallow Lane. The ground was next to the Dunstable to Luton railway line and players used to regularly complain about having trouble seeing the ball because of smoke from the trains. They sold their ground and moved to a stadium on Dunstable Road and then moved again to their current home, Kenilworth Road, in 1905.

Kenilworth Road stadium has a capacity of 10,356 and is situated in a residential area of Luton called Bury Park. The ground is surrounded by houses. In fact, the visitors’ entrances are on Oak Road and the gates to the stadium go through houses.

Luton Town’s nickname is the hatters because of Luton’s historical connection with the hat making trade and the club badge has a traditional straw hat above the town’s crest.

The club has traditionally played in black and white or orange and blue. The kit for the new season hasn’t been released yet, but the home kit will most likely have a bright orange shirt.

Luton Town's biggest rivals are Watford. Watford have a better league record than Luton, though are in the league beneath them this season. However, Luton are ahead of their rivals in the M1 Derby or the Beds-Herts Derby as the matches between the clubs are known, having won 53 of the 120 competitive matches between the two clubs. Watford have only won 38 times.

Luton Town are the first professional football club to return to the top tier of English football after successive relegations down to the fifth tier of English football. Before the Premier League, the top four tiers of English football were the English Football League. Teams that played in lower leagues were described as non-League. This is a bit confusing today as the top tiers have different names, but we still use the term non-League to refer to the National League and the lower levels.

Luton was relegated from the First Division, which was the top tier in English football in 1992, the season before the Premier League was formed. This will be their first season playing in the Premier League and their first season back at the top level of English football.

The club spent four years as a non-league team. In 2013, Luton defeated the Premier League team Norwich City in their away tie and became the first non-League side to defeat a Premier League team and the first non-League side to beat a top tier team since 1989.

That year, Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu joined the club on loan from West Ham United. He was only 19 at the time and had only had made one appearance for the Hammers in the League Cup. Mpanzu was born in England to Congolese parents and represents DR Congo internationally. Luton welcomed the young midfielder and Mpanzu must have enjoyed the extra football as the following season, he signed for Luton and made the move permanent.

In 2014, Mpanzu helped Luton win the Conference Premier title and secure promotion to the Football League. That year, one of Mpanzu’s old teammates from West Ham, Dan Potts, joined the Hatters. They fought their way up through League Two and were promoted to League One in 2018. They won a second successive promotion to the Championship the following season where they grew in strength over four seasons, making the play-offs in 2022 and 2023.

The top two teams from the Championship are promoted to the Premier League and the third place is won by the winner of the play-offs which sees the 3rd to 6th places play against each other. In 2022, Luton finished in 6th and were beaten in the play-offs by Huddersfield Town. In 2023, the Hatters finished in third and first beat Sunderland to face Coventry in the play-off finals. After a tense 1-1 draw, Luton beat Coventry 6-5 on penalties and Mpanzu and Potts were set to play Premier League football.

Before the story, I asked you:

Which player has been promoted four times with Luton Town?

The answer is: Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu. He really has been on the most incredible journey in football.

The words from the story that I want to talk about are:

• To be founded
• To have trouble doing something
• Current
• Residential
• Connection
• Rivals
• Successive
• To form
• Appearance
• To be set to do something

This is a lot of vocabulary all at once so it would be a good idea to take notes about any of the items that are new for you. After I have spoken about the vocabulary, I will play the story about Luton again so you can hear the language in context.

To be founded

To found something means to make something exist. You can talk about when a company was founded or when a school or university was founded. It’s almost alway used in passive statements. In the article about Luton, I said that the town was founded in the 6th century. I said Luton was founded by the Anglo-Saxons, but we don’t really know much about the people who founded the town so it’s better to talk about the town and use a passive structure. We also talk about when football clubs were founded. The oldest association football club is the Cambridge University football club, though they were still making up the rules back when they were first playing. The oldest independent football club that’s still playing is Sheffield United which was founded in 1875, just 10 years before Luton Town was founded.

To have trouble doing something

If you have trouble doing something, it is difficult for you to do it. Most of the time, we use this phrase to talk about symptoms of illnesses or conditions. So my older sister used to have trouble sleeping. She suffered from insomnia. If you sprain your ankle, you might have trouble walking. Or if you have a bad memory, you might have trouble remembering someone’s name. We often use the phrase for temporary problems so we use the continuous aspect. I’m having trouble finding good examples of this language for the language challenge, but I will keep trying.

Current

The adjective current is used to say that something is the present version or example of a thing that changes. So the current year is 2023. Mikel Arteta is the current manager of Arsenal. At a job interview, you might be asked: ‘What is your current salary?’ I said that Luton moved into their current home at Kenilworth Road in 1905, so although current implies that the situation could change, Luton have been in their current ground for 118 years.

Residential

The adjective residential comes from the verb to reside which means to live in a place. Where do you reside? Sounds like a slightly old fashioned or formal way to ask where someone lives. So if an area is residential, it is where people live, that is it’s where there are houses and flats. If an area has a lot of shops, it’s a commercial area and if an area has lots of factories, it’s an industrial area.

Connection

A connection is a link or something that relates two things together. I think I use the word most often to talk about my internet connection. When I have a problem, I have to phone up my internet company to complain about my connection. As well as physical connections, you can use the word to talk about relationships between ideas. So Luton have a hat on their club badge because of the town’s connection to the hat trade. This relationship is historic. When the police investigate a crime, they search for connections between the suspects and the evidence of the crime.

Rivals

This is a word that we’ve spoken about many times in this podcast. Rivals are two or more people or groups that are competing with each other for the same thing, usually in the same competition. So all the teams in the Premier League are rivals because they are all competing for the Premier league title. As well as sporting rivals, you can have business rivals if there are two businesses competing for the same customers or clients and you can have love rivals if your life is very dramatic and you are competing with someone else to win the heart of someone you love.

Successive

The adjective successive is used to say that something happens again and again without any break. So if a team wins five matches in a row, they could be called five successive wins. I said that Luton returned to the top tier of English football after successive relegations down to the fifth tier. They were relegated from the Championship to League One and then again to League two and again to the National League. Their climb back wasn’t quite as quick but they did manage successive promotions from League Two to the Championship.

To form

The use of the verb form in the text, is similar in meaning to found. If you form something, you make something out of separate things. So, I said the Premier League was formed in 1992. The league was formed when the clubs came together. I also said that Luton Town were founding members of the Football League. They didn’t found the Football League, but they were founding members. They were one of the clubs that formed the League. You can from things when you bring things together to make something new and bigger. Paul McCartney and John Lennon formed the Beatles in the early 1960s. Recently, protestors have blocked traffic by linking arms to form a barrier across the road.

Appearance

The noun appearance comes from the verb to appear which means to be seen somewhere. So people appear on TV and in shows. The noun form is used to say that someone was in a play or film or as was the case in the story about Luton in football matches. In football, it means a bit more than be seen. An appearance is a time when a player takes part in a match. So if a player is at a match, but doesn’t play, even though they are seen, it won't count as an appearance in football English.

To be set to do something

If you are set to do something, you are prepared and ready to do something. So you might read about a supermarket that is set to open a new branch or when the CEO of a big company is set to step down. I recently read about a famous actress who is set to appear in court to testify about newspaper journalists' aggressive investigations into her private life.

OK - that’s 10 words and phrases today. They were:

• To be founded
• To have trouble doing something
• Current
• Residential
• Connection
• Rivals
• Successive
• To form
• Appearance
• To be set to do something

Listen to the story about Luton one more time to hear the language in context.

Luton Town Football Club

Luton Town Football Club are based in Luton which is in Bedfordshire in England about 30 miles north of London. Luton is a large town with a population of 286,000. The town was founded by the Anglo-Saxons in the 6th century on the banks of the river Lea. In the 17th Century, the town became a centre for hat making and in the 1930s, the town was producing 70 million hats per year. Today, there are still a handful of hat makers, but the hat making district has been developed into a creative quarter and the old factories have been taken over by filmmakers, architects, artisans and artists.

Today, Luton is best known for having an international airport. It’s often called London Luton Airport, but it’s actually 30 miles from London. The other thing that Luton is famous for is its football club.

Luton Town Football Club was founded in 1885 from the best players from several local teams including the Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior. In 1891, Luton became the first fully professional club in southern England and was a founding member of the Southern Football League and then the United League and then the Football League.

Luton Town’s original ground was at Dallow Lane. The ground was next to the Dunstable to Luton railway line and players used to regularly complain about having trouble seeing the ball because of smoke from the trains. They sold their ground and moved to a stadium on Dunstable Road and then moved again to their current home, Kenilworth Road, in 1905.

Kenilworth Road stadium has a capacity of 10,356 and is situated in a residential area of Luton called Bury Park. The ground is surrounded by houses. In fact, the visitors’ entrances are on Oak Road and the gates to the stadium go through houses.

Luton Town’s nickname is the hatters because of Luton’s historical connection with the hat making trade and the club badge has a traditional straw hat above the town’s crest.

The club has traditionally played in black and white or orange and blue. The kit for the new season hasn’t been released yet, but the home kit will most likely have a bright orange shirt.

Luton Town's biggest rivals are Watford. Watford have a better league record than Luton, though are in the league beneath them this season. However, Luton are ahead of their rivals in the M1 Derby or the Beds-Herts Derby as the matches between the clubs are known, having won 53 of the 120 competitive matches between the two clubs. Watford have only won 38 times.

Luton Town are the first professional football club to return to the top tier of English football after successive relegations down to the fifth tier of English football. Before the Premier League, the top four tiers of English football were the English Football League. Teams that played in lower leagues were described as non-League. This is a bit confusing today as the top tiers have different names, but we still use the term non-League to refer to the National League and the lower levels.

Luton was relegated from the First Division, which was the top tier in English football in 1992, the season before the Premier League was formed. This will be their first season playing in the Premier League and their first season back at the top level of English football.

The club spent four years as a non-league team. In 2013, Luton defeated the Premier League team Norwich City in their away tie and became the first non-League side to defeat a Premier League team and the first non-League side to beat a top tier team since 1989.

That year, Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu joined the club on loan from West Ham United. He was only 19 at the time and had only had made one appearance for the Hammers in the League Cup. Mpanzu was born in England to Congolese parents and represents DR Congo internationally. Luton welcomed the young midfielder and Mpanzu must have enjoyed the extra football as the following season, he signed for Luton and made the move permanent.

In 2014, Mpanzu helped Luton win the Conference Premier title and secure promotion to the Football League. That year, one of Mpanzu’s old teammates from West Ham, Dan Potts, joined the Hatters. They fought their way up through League Two and were promoted to League One in 2018. They won a second successive promotion to the Championship the following season where they grew in strength over four seasons, making the play-offs in 2022 and 2023.

The top two teams from the Championship are promoted to the Premier League and the third place is won by the winner of the play-offs which sees the 3rd to 6th places play against each other. In 2022, Luton finished in 6th and were beaten in the play-offs by Huddersfield Town. In 2023, the Hatters finished in third and first beat Sunderland to face Coventry in the play-off finals. After a tense 1-1 draw, Luton beat Coventry 6-5 on penalties and Mpanzu and Potts were set to play Premier League football.

Language Challenge

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

Your challenge this week is to complete the gaps in the following sentences with the correct forms of the words and phrases that I’ve spoken about in this podcast. I have taken all of these sentences from news websites and edited them slightly.

Number 1. Most of the ________ problems that customers are facing come from our new computer system.

Number 2. Karim Benzema marked his final Real Madrid ________ with a goal as they drew their last game of the season at home to Athletic Bilbao.

Number 3. Viewers of the latest Spiderman film have complained that they have been ________ hearing the dialogue.

Number 4. To protest against the cost of living crisis, the lorry drivers blocked the motorway by using their lorries to ________ a barricade across the road.

Number 5. The council has given the go-ahead to plans to build an eight-storey office block on a ________ street.

Number 6. New Orleans was ________ by the French in 1718.

Number 7. Celtic fans fear Kyogo is ________ leave after the Japanese striker sent an emotional social media message.

Number 8. Fans were delighted to hear that Alexis Mac Alister has made an early deal and signed for Liverpool despite strong interest from some of the Reds’ major ________.

Number 9. Two teenagers were arrested this week in ________ with a fire at a supermarket in Stanley.

Number 10. Chelsea won the Women's Super League for a fourth ________ season as they cruised to a final-day victory against Reading

Leave your answers to the language challenge in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Football phrase

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

This week, the football phrase is ****-****. These are additional matches that are played at the end of a tournament to decide the outcome. In English football, three teams are promoted from the Championship to the Premier League. The top two teams are promoted and then the 3rd to 6th place teams compete in a series of ****-**** to decide which team joins the top two in the Premier League.

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, I am going to go through the answers to last week’s language challenge.

Number 1. I’ve had the best time of my life.

Number 2. This shop sells the best sausage rolls in the UK.

Number 3. We should hire Jo. She’s the best applicant by far.

And 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.