This Week: Premier League Prediction Three

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.

This is the third of a series of prediction podcasts. I have made predictions about the teams who are going to struggle to survive and about which team will surprise people the most and today I am going to make a prediction about who is going to be the best player this season.

But before I make my prediction, I want to give you the answer to yesterday’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it yesterday, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Yesterday’s football phrase was a ground. From 2010 to 2020, if you had gone to watch a match at this ground, you would have seen Kayla the eagle who flew around this ground before every match. Do you know which ground I’m describing?

Congratulations to Alex from Ukraine, AhmadAmr from Egypt and Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Ken from Japan, Hasan from Turkey and AndreTorre102 from Brazil.

You all worked out that the ground I was looking for was Selhurst Park, home of Crystal Palace.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now, it’s time for me to make my third prediction.

Question 3. Who will be the best player?

The smart money is of course on Erling Haaland. Most pundits see him breaking his own records in his second year in the Premier League. If he stays fit, Erling Haaland is a shoo-in for the Golden Boot. Unless ... Haaland is such a formidable threat that opposition managers are going to target him. In his first season, he overwhelmed opposition defences but this year, finding ways to stop Haaland will be a key part of every other manager’s tactics when playing against City. He might end up a victim of his own success.

Two other players that are being singled out in predictions for player of the season, I am delighted to read, are Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice. For me, Saka has had the most potential of any player in the league for ages. He’s still only 21 and this year, he’s got an incredible team to support him.

Declan Rice is being described as the signing of the season. His control and composure will provide Arsenal’s midfield with greater stability and that will have an enormous impact.

Saying that, I’m still going to plump for Haaland. He scored two goals at Burnley in the first half of the first match of the season.

Language focus

The language that I am going to focus on from this prediction is:

• The smart money
• A shoo-in
• Might end up

The smart money is an interesting phrase that I have spoken about before. It comes from gambling. If you gamble, you risk money when you bet on the outcome of a sporting competition. I have never done this myself, but in the UK, there are businesses called bookmakers where you can go and put money on a team or often a horse in a race if you think they are going to win. The adjective smart means intelligent. So when people say the smart money is on someone or a team or a result, that means that is the bet that an intelligent person or someone who knows a lot about the sport or situation would make. So when making a prediction, it’s a bit like saying this is a smart prediction or this is the prediction that experts would make.

The next phrase is a shoo-in. This is another strange phrase. I have been using this phrase all my life and never really thought about it. The verb to shoo is spelled shoo and has nothing to do with the shoes you wear on your feet. To shoo something means to scare something away, usually by saying ‘shoo’. I have no idea why we say this. If you find an animal, perhaps a stray cat has come into your house. In the UK, if you want it to leave, you can walk towards it waving your arms and saying ‘shoo’. Normally we shoo people or animals out of places, but you could shoo someone in. In sports, in the past, if a competitor was shooed-in then they were let win. The other competitors let them win, they shooed them into first place. So the phrase used to be associated with cheating. The shoo-in was a guaranteed win because the other competitors would shoo them in. However, today the phrase has lost the association with cheating and only means a guaranteed win. A shoo-in is the person who everyone knows will win. In sport, this is usually because they are so good, but we also use the phrase for competitive jobs. If lots of people are applying for a job, but one candidate is going to win, that candidate is a shoo-in.

The phrasal verb to end up means to be in a situation at the end of an event or series of actions. So if you are planning a long journey around the UK, you might start in Edinburgh and then travel south to Newcastle then down to Manchester and then Sheffield and Birmingham and end up in London. We also use the phrase to make predictions. So you might warn someone, You’ll end up making yourself sick if you eat all of those sweets. My parents used to say things like you’ll end up flipping burgers i f you don’t work hard at school. In my prediction, I suggested that Haaland might end up a victim of his success. I think it’s possible that other teams will work very hard to stop Haaland and this might limit his ability to dominate as much as he did last season.

Language Challenge

Your challenge today is to make your own prediction about who is going to be the best player this season. I’m going to publish another episode tomorrow with my fourth prediction and then one more. For each episode, I want to read about your predictions and then, at the end of the season, I’ll look back and we can see whose predictions were the most accurate.

Football Phrase

Now it’s time for today's football phrase.

Today’s football phrase is a club. I’m sticking with football knowledge rather than football English phrases for these predictions as you don't have a lot of time to think about the answer. The club I am looking for today is the oldest in the Premier League and is also associated with one of the oldest stories in England.

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

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.