This Week: An early Christmas present

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 story from the Premier League.

This week, I’m talking about Newcastle United who hosted Fulham.

The words and phrases I am going to talk about today are:

• To dash someone’s hopes
• Injuries worries worsened
• To stagger
• Recklessly
• To protest your innocence
• Slow motion
• Riled up
• A moment of madness
• To take matters into your own hands

Listen out for this vocabulary in the story.

After the story, there will be a language focus and then there will be a language challenge for you 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.

Last week’s football phrase is a bit of a football English cliche. It’s used to describe a team that has conceded an early goal because they hadn’t really settled into the match and made a mistake. When a team concedes this type of goal, it’s because they weren’t really paying as much attention as they should have been. It’s almost like they needed to wake up and focus on the game.

Congratulations to AndreTorre102 from Brazil, Alex from Ukraine, Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Ken from Japan, Lukáš from Czechia, welcome to Premier Skills English Lukáš! Congratulations to Hasan from Turkey, Wojciech M from Poland, and Denis2000 from Belarus.

You all worked out that the phrase I was looking for was caught napping.

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

Now it’s time for the story.

An early Christmas present for Miley

Newcastle needed a positive performance against Fulham as they hadn’t had a great week. Many of the fans had high hopes for their club’s first season in the Champions League for 20 years. But those hopes were dashed and fans were disappointed when they crashed out of Europe after losing a tightly fought match against AC Milan.

The Newcastle side has taken several hits recently and they started their match against Fulham with several key players out of action due to injuries and Tonali’s ban.

Shortly after kick-off, Newcastle’s injury worries worsened when Fabian Schär grabbed his backside and dropped to the ground and then about half an hour in, Joelinton also left the pitch with a problem. Though this did open the door for 17-year-old Lewis Miley who made his 7th appearance. The teenager joined the Newcastle United Academy when he was only 7 years old.

The most decisive moment of the game, though, had nothing to do with Newcastle’s injuries. It started when Jamaal Lascelles staggered clumsily backwards and caught Raul Jiminez with his arm in Jiminez’s face. The referee saw nothing wrong with the contact and the match played on. But Jiminez was livid. Not long after that, still riled up after the clash with Lascelles, Jiminez threw himself recklessly into a high, wild boots-up challenge on Sean Longstaff. He seemed to realise how dangerous the tackle was while he was still in the air with his foot heading for Longstaff’s face because he turned and tried to get his boot out of the way and in the end, caught Longstaff hard on the face with his bum.

The referee was not impressed and immediately reached for a yellow card. Jiminez was protesting his innocence, but there was no way he was going to talk his way out of a booking. The referee was called to review the action at the VAR screen and was shown the challenge in slow motion. This convinced him to cancel the yellow and show Jiminez a red card. The moment of madness cost Raul Jiminez and left his team a man down.

Despite their advantage, Newcastle struggled to find the Fulham goal. It took until the 57th minute for the breakthrough to come for Newcastle United. Guimaraes, who had been having a brilliant game received the ball in the centre from Livramento. Guimaraes ran through the Fulham defence, past Cairney, Palhinha, Pereira and Robinson before setting up Miley who ran on and calmly put the ball past Leno and into the net. This goal made Miley the youngest-ever player to score in a Premier League match for Newcastle. After the match, Miley told reporters: “What a moment it was for me and my family, to be in the stand and watch that goal go in. It was a great feeling to see the ball go into the back of the net.”

Less than 10 minutes later Gordon surged towards goal. He played a nice ball forwards for Wilson who was blocked and might have earned a penalty, but the referee played the advantage as the ball was rolling nicely for Almiron who took matters into his own hands and doubled Newcastle’s lead.

Dan Burn sealed the deal in the 82nd minute. Fulham had just blocked an attack from a set piece but the ball fell to Guimaraes who checked the area and then delivered a very clever ball that found Burn at the rear post. Leno blocked the header, but Burn was still there and managed to deflect it back into the goal off his thigh.

Final score: Newcastle United 3 - 0 Fulham

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

• To dash someone’s hopes
• Injuries worries worsened
• To stagger
• Riled up
• Recklessly
• To protest your innocence
• Slow motion
• A moment of madness
• To take matters into your own hands

To dash someone’s hopes
This is quite a common collocation, to dash someone’s hopes. It means to take away the possibility that someone was hoping for. I said that Newcastle fans had high hopes for their club in the Champions League. They probably hoped to make the knockout stage and progress through. Some will have even hoped that their team would win it ... high hopes indeed. But when they were beaten by AC Milan leaving them bottom of their group, the possibility of the knockout stage was lost. They were out. So those hopes, those high hopes were for something that was no longer possible so we can say that those hopes were dashed.

Injuries worries worsened
This isn’t a particularly commonly used phrase, but it’s quite advanced. If something is bad and then it gets worse, you can say that it worsened. To worsen means to become worse or more bad. To worry means to think about bad things that might happen or that are happening. When you worry about something, you think too much about a bad situation. We use the noun form to talk about things that you might worry about. So it’s quite common for people to have problems with money and to describe these as money worries. For a football team, especially the manager, injuries are problems that the team and manager will worry about so injury worries are all the injury problems that a manager might worry about. Before the match Newcastle had 9 players out of action. When Schar and Joelinton had to stop playing because of injuries, Howe’s injury worries worsened.

To stagger
To stagger means to walk badly, in a way that looks like you are going to fall over. If you are injured, perhaps in a car accident, but you can still walk, you might stagger to the side of the road before you sit down. In action films, when the hero gets hurt, they might stagger for a bit and then they usually recover. In real life, I think that most staggering happens when people have had too much to drink.

Recklessly
I think I have spoken about this word before. The adjective reckless means dangerous carelessness. So if you are doing something dangerous, perhaps you are driving a car or using a power tool and you don’t take care, then you are being reckless. If you don’t take care when you are painting a wall, then if you have an accident, you might get paint on the floor. So that would be careless. But if you are using a power tool, perhaps you are drilling into a wall and you haven’t thought about pipes or electrical wiring, then you might cause a serious problem so that would be reckless. In football, a dangerous challenge can be described as reckless which is why I said that Jimenz threw himself recklessly high. It was the height that made it dangerous.

To protest your innocence
Innocent is the opposite of guilty. If someone says that you committed a crime, if it is not true and you did not commit the crime, then you are innocent. If however, you did commit the crime, then you are guilty. If you protest your innocence, you try to persuade someone that you are innocent. When a player tries to convince a referee that they did not commit a foul on purpose, they are protesting their innocence.

Slow motion
This is easy to explain as you will all have seen this. When you’re watching a football match and they replay the action after a goal or after a foul, the TV broadcasters often show the action slower than normal speed so you can see exactly what happened. This is called slow motion. It’s also used a lot in action films. You can say that the broadcaster replayed the action in slow motion. The referee often gets to see the action in slow motion when they watch the VAR replay.

Riled up
If you are riled up, you are angry because of something that someone has said or done. We say that something gets you riled up. When people let their dog go to the toilet in public, especially where children play, and don’t clean it up, that gets me really riled up. You can also just say riled. I think riled means cross or irritated about something and riled up means really angry. Jiminez was definitely riled up.

A moment of madness
If someone has a moment of madness, it means they were so emotional or confused about something that they acted in a way that was not reasonable or rational. The idea is that they were so worked up by something that they were temporarily unable to think clearly. When Jiminez fouled Longstaff, he was clearly still angry and lashed out.
I’m not sure about this phrase. I heard it in the commentary on the match and I like the way it sounds, but in general, phrases that refer to mental illness are not really acceptable. I think it was more childish than mad. Perhaps it would be better to say a moment of immaturity.

To take matters into your own hands
This idiom means to deal with a situation because you think that the people who should have done it have not. So if the council fails to fix a broken fence, you might take matters into your own hands and fix it yourself. In the Batman films, the hero Batman thinks that the police are not stopping criminals in Gotham City so decides to dress up as a bat and take matters into his own hands and fight crime. In the story, when Wilson was blocked, Almiron could have let the referee award a penalty, but instead, he took matters into his own hands and scored.

Today, I’ve spoken about 9 useful words and phrases. The words and phrases I have spoken about are:

• To dash someone’s hopes
• Injuries worries worsened
• To stagger
• Recklessly
• To protest your innocence
• Slow motion
• Riled up
• A moment of madness
• To take matters into your own hands

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

An early Christmas present for Miley

Newcastle needed a positive performance against Fulham as they hadn’t had a great week. Many of the fans had high hopes for their club’s first season in the Champions League for 20 years. But those hopes were dashed and fans were disappointed when they crashed out of Europe after losing a tightly fought match against AC Milan.

The Newcastle side has taken several hits recently and they started their match against Fulham with several key players out of action due to injuries and Tonali’s ban.

Shortly after kick-off, Newcastle’s injury worries worsened when Fabian Schär grabbed his backside and dropped to the ground and then about half an hour in, Joelinton also left the pitch with a problem. Though this did open the door for 17-year-old Lewis Miley who made his 7th appearance. The teenager joined the Newcastle United Academy when he was only 7 years old.

The most decisive moment of the game, though, had nothing to do with Newcastle’s injuries. It started when Jamaal Lascelles staggered clumsily backwards and caught Raul Jiminez with his arm in Jiminez’s face. The referee saw nothing wrong with the contact and the match played on. But Jiminez was livid. Not long after that, still riled up after the clash with Lascelles, Jiminez threw himself recklessly into a high, wild boots-up challenge on Sean Longstaff. He seemed to realise how dangerous the tackle was while he was still in the air with his foot heading for Longstaff’s face because he turned and tried to get his boot out of the way and in the end, caught Longstaff hard on the face with his bum.

The referee was not impressed and immediately reached for a yellow card. Jiminez was protesting his innocence, but there was no way he was going to talk his way out of a booking. The referee was called to review the action at the VAR screen and was shown the challenge in slow motion. This convinced him to cancel the yellow and show Jiminez a red card. The moment of madness cost Raul Jiminez and left his team a man down.

Despite their advantage, Newcastle struggled to find the Fulham goal. It took until the 57th minute for the breakthrough to come for Newcastle United. Guimaraes, who had been having a brilliant game received the ball in the centre from Livramento. Guimaraes ran through the Fulham defence, past Cairney, Palhinha, Pereira and Robinson before setting up Miley who ran on and calmly put the ball past Leno and into the net. This goal made Miley the youngest-ever player to score in a Premier League match for Newcastle. After the match, Miley told reporters: “What a moment it was for me and my family, to be in the stand and watch that goal go in. It was a great feeling to see the ball go into the back of the net.”

Less than 10 minutes later Gordon surged towards goal. He played a nice ball forwards for Wilson who was blocked and might have earned a penalty, but the referee played the advantage as the ball was rolling nicely for Almiron who took matters into his own hands and doubled Newcastle’s lead.

Dan Burn sealed the deal in the 82nd minute. Fulham had just blocked an attack from a set piece but the ball fell to Guimaraes who checked the area and then delivered a very clever ball that found Burn at the rear post. Leno blocked the header, but Burn was still there and managed to deflect it back into the goal off his thigh.

Final score: Newcastle United 3 - 0 Fulham

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again. I have found examples of the words and phrases in stories online and edited them slightly. I have removed today’s vocabulary so I want you to fill in the gaps with the correct form of the language from the podcast.

Number 1. A bad week for Wall Street closed with big drops in stock value as ________________ about the banking industry and strength of the economy.

Number 2. Police have reported that mopeds (small motorbikes) are being driven __________ on the streets of Oxford.

Number 3. On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was beheaded on Tower Green at the Tower of London. She ____________________ until the last.

Number 4. A man has admitted being too drunk to care for a toddler after he ____________ around a bowling alley with a bottle of beer in his hand. The man has narrowly avoided jail.

Number 5. UK psychologists say _____________ helps referees to better distinguish yellow card and red card incidents during football matches.

Number 6. Stargazers ________ of a glimpse of the Northern Lights were _________ when clouds rolled in and covered the night sky on Wednesday.

Number 7. A man was so angry with his neighbour who had been tipping leaves over his fence, so he __________________________ and blew all the leaves back into his neighbour's garden using leaf blowers.

Number 8. Marc Polmans was on the brink of victory, but had it all snatched away after a ___________________. The Aussie tennis star was disqualified from the Shanghai Masters qualifying tournament after smashing the ball into the umpire's face.

Number 9. The state of Minnesota in the USA has a new flag that has __________ some right-wing conservatives who really don’t like change.

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’s football phrase is a *** *****. A *** ***** is a tactic that has been practised on the training ground. These moves are practised from predictable setups, like from throw-ins, corners and free kicks. Some managers are very good at designing tactics from these positions that are hard to defend against. Teams that practise these a lot are described as dangerous from *** ******.

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. Formula One's media has gradually been running out of adjectives to describe Max Verstappen's dominance this year, but the statistics of his phenomenal 2023 season speak for themselves.

Number 2. I went to a Christmas market that’s been voted one of the best in the UK – I had high hopes but it was just depressing.

Number 3. Erik ten Hag admits Manchester United’s defending was ‘not good enough’ and that he must ‘criticise the team’ after their slip-up to Galatasaray.

Number 4. Nottingham Forest forward Anthony Elanga is full of praise for his new club as they prepare for their second season back in the Premier League. "I feel like this is a big step up for me, a step that I wanted and needed. Hopefully we can have an amazing season."

Number 5. A woman seen weaving her Mercedes across the road has been banned for drink-driving after it was found she was narrowly over the legal alcohol limit.

Number 6. I knew Jamie Mulgrew would become a top player at Linfield when we picked him out at Glentoran, reveals Blues’ talent spotter Willie McKeown

Number 7. 'Stop Brexit Man' Steve Bray, an anti-Brexit campaigner got into a scrap after protesting at a Bruges Group event outside the Tory Party Conference.

Number 8. Speaking to media on Wednesday, the Irish defender said: “This league is quite physical and I’m learning from each game. I’m a big lad myself so I don’t mind a challenge.”

Number 9. After a serious hearing in Congress in the US, the study of UFOs is finally becoming a respectable science.

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 who are celebrating have a wonderful and merry Christmas and I hope everyone stays fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.