This Week: A Rollercoaster Week

Hello my name is Jack and welcome to This Week, the weekly round-up of Premier League action on Premier Skills English where the focus is English vocabulary from the stories.

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.

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 new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

Before we get to the stories, I wanted to send a personal message of support to Alex, Liubomyr, Sabanoleg, Volodymyr and Violinka and all of the Premier Skills English members from Ukraine. I am thinking about you a lot at the moment and about what you must be going through and only hope that you are well and your families are safe.

Football Phrase

OK. Now, it's time to announce the answer to last week's football phrase. In case you missed it, listen to the football phrase one more time and see if you can guess the answer.

Last week's football phrase was * **** ** ****. This is what a team has when they have played one fewer match than their competitors in a league. So, if a team is two points behind and they have * **** ** ****, they still have the chance to go ahead in the league.

Congratulations to Daniel 06 from Mexico, MohamedKuna from Sudan, Taki and Hayato from Japan, Ranj from Norway, Thitiphat from Thailand, Hsn and Mehmet Sisman from Turkey, Taha Gashout from Libya and 258963 from Vietnam. You all correctly worked out that the answer to last week's football phrase was a game in hand.

Keep listening to the end of the podcast as there will be a new football phrase for you to guess.

Now it's time for this week's stories. The words and phrases I am looking at this week are:

• rollercoaster
• changes of fortune
• Guardiola's tactics triumph
• a ricochet
• determination
• taking each game as they come

Listen out for these words and phrases in the headlines and stories.

Spurs ends a rollercoaster week on a high

Tottenham Hotspur finished the week with a win after a dramatic series of changes of fortune. A week ago, they outplayed league leaders Manchester City and then lost to Burnley at the other end of the table. Spurs fans were probably pretty confident of success at Leeds but were rewarded with a battering as they defeated the Peacocks 4-0.

The two phrases I want to talk about from this headline are rollercoaster and changes of fortune.

A rollercoaster is a fairground ride. It's like a wild little train that goes up and down and often loops the loop and is very exciting to ride. We use the word rollercoaster or rollercoaster ride to talk about a time when lots of things happen that change your mood very dramatically. So if something makes you very happy and then very sad and then very happy again, you could say it was a rollercoaster. Sometimes you hear people describe films as emotional rollercoasters, if they are very dramatic. Tottenham Hotspur's week has been a rollercoaster because they started really high and happy beating Manchester City and then they were beaten by Burnley which was a low and probably made them feel sad and then this weekend, they absolutely thrashed Leeds 4-0. What a week!

When Spurs beat Manchester City, they were doing very well. When they lost against Burnley, they were not doing well. I described this as a change of fortunes. The word fortune is quite tricky because it has a few similar meanings. The simplest meaning of fortune is a large amount of money or property. You can say that a successful business person sold their business for a fortune. Another meaning of fortune is chance or luck. If you have good fortune, then you are lucky or something lucky has happened to you. You can use the adjective fortunate in this situation. If you have bad luck you are unfortunate. When I was describing the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur, I was talking about the events and things that they were taking part in and the results or the way it affects them. This isn't as simple as luck because they are professional sports people who have worked hard, but you can still use the word fortune, especially in the phrase a change of fortunes which you use when the success or wealth of a person or group changes dramatically.

Let's move on to the next story.

Guardiola's tactics triumph at Everton

Manchester City may have expected a win at Everton, but they hadn't expected it to be so difficult. Frank Lampard switched to a 4-3-3 formation and built a solid defence that City were finding impossible to penetrate. With two tactical changes, Guardiola's men managed to stretch Everton's defence enough to allow Phil Foden pick up a ricochet and scramble the ball across the line for a late winner.

The two phrases I want to talk about from this headline are Guardiola's tactics triumph and a ricochet.

We have described the word tactics before in this podcast so I'll just remind you that tactics are plans for a series of moves when you are talking about military operations in team sports. In football, this means the formation and the positions that the players play in and set pieces and moves that are practised to try to break down the opposition's defence and score goals. When Manchester City faced Everton at home, their tactics weren't working at first. Frank Lampard showed that he understood City's game and found a way to stop them. However, Guardiola changed his team's tactics twice during the match and after 82 minutes Phil Foden scored. So Guardiola's tactics were successful which is why I said they triumphed. To triumph means to succeed at something grand. The word triumph can be a verb or a noun. It usually means a very great success or to have a very great success. So if you organise a party that is really popular and people have a great time, you could say it was a triumph. Now, in football, you might think that a triumph means a 4-0 like Spurs match at Leeds, but any win is a great success in the Premier League so it's OK to call City's 1-0 win over Everton a triumph.

The other word I want to look at is ricochet. This word can be a verb or a noun. It is very similar to the word bounce or deflect. It's only used with balls and bullets. If a bullet hits a wall and then bounces off at a different angle, you could say that the ball ricocheted off the wall. We use the word to talk about balls that bounce off other players or the goalposts. I think we normally talk about ricochets when the angle changes like a deflection. If a ball hits the crossbar straight on and bounces back onto the pitch, that's a bounce, but if it just hits the bar and changes direction but still goes into the goal, we would say that the ball ricocheted off the crossbar and into the net. The word comes from French and is spelled r-i-c-o-c-h-e-t and is regular so is written with an -ed ending in past forms, but is pronounced ricochet and ricocheted.

Let's move on to the final story.

West Ham win sets up top-four finish challenge

West Ham have shown their determination to stay in the fight to finish in the top four with a well deserved win against Wolves at the London Stadium. The battle for European football will be tough for all of the contenders. Covid delays have led to some teams with multiple matches in hand which makes it really hard to predict how things will end up. David Moyes is taking each game as they come and was delighted with the performance.

The two phrases I want to talk about from this headline are determination and taking each game as they come.

Determination is a characteristic or ability. It's the ability to keep trying to do something difficult until you are successful. The adjective determined means the same thing. If you're determined to do something, then you will keep trying even if you are not successful at first. In the story, I said that West Ham have shown their determination to stay in the fight for a top-four finish. This means they are playing hard and look like they really want to succeed, they really want to finish in the top four. I suppose in the Premier League, most teams are determined and show their determination to win and play as well as they can. Sometimes, when a team is losing towards the end of a match, it looks like they have given up and have accepted the loss. However, most teams will keep fighting till the final whistle because they are determined to play as well as they can all the time the match is still on.

The last phrase I want to talk about today is a wonderful football cliche. The phrase to take each game as they come means to focus on each match and not think about longer term strategies or the league. When a team wins an important match, sports journalists always ask the manager if they think they can win the league or the cup. These ideas and prospects can distract players and managers and so the manager will reply that they are taking each game as they come and not thinking about the league or what the result will mean. We also use the phrase when talking about people who have experienced something horrible, perhaps they have lost their job or something serious has happened in their life; we can say: she's taking each day as they come. Or she's taking one day at a time which is another phrase that means the same thing. I'm sure that David Moyes is very excited about the prospect of a top-four finish, but he's got a job to do and needs to focus on his next match which will involve a trip to Anfield.

OK, so the vocabulary I looked at today was:

• rollercoaster
• changes of fortune
• Guardiola's tactics triumph
• a ricochet
• determination
• taking each game as they come

Listen to the headlines again to hear this language in context.

Headlines - replay

Spurs ends a rollercoaster week on a high

Tottenham Hotspur finished the week with a win after a dramatic series of changes of fortune. A week ago, they outplayed league leaders Manchester City and then lost to Burnley at the other end of the table. Spurs fans were probably pretty confident of success at Leeds but were rewarded with a battering as they defeated the Peacocks 4-0.

Guardiola's tactics triumph at Everton

Manchester City may have expected a win at Everton, but they hadn't expected it to be so difficult. Frank Lampard switched to a 4-3-3 formation and built a solid defence that City were finding impossible to penetrate. With two tactical changes, Guardiola's men managed to stretch Everton's defence enough to allow Phil Foden pick up a ricochet and scramble the ball across the line for a late winner.

West Ham win sets up top-four finish challenge

West Ham have shown their determination to stay in the fight to finish in the top four with a well deserved win against Wolves at the London Stadium. The battle for European football will be tough for all of the contenders. Covid delays have led to some teams with multiple matches in hand which makes it really hard to predict how things will end up. David Moyes is taking each game as they come and was delighted with the performance.

Task

Right; now, I'm going to give you a chance to think about the language again.

I'm going to give you six sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the words and phrases I've spoken about in this podcast. You don't have to use the full phrase, you may have to change the tense or transform the word a bit to make it fit.

Number 1. She never gives up. You have to admire her ________ to win.

Number 2: The ball ________ off the keeper and into the bottom left corner.

Number 3: What a week! Fired on Monday and hired on Wednesday. It's been an emotional ________.

Number 4: Things look hard now, but if you keep trying, I'm sure you will ________ in the end.

Number 5: When you are doing an exam, you need to try to take each question as they ______. Try not to think about anything else.

Number 6: Everything was going so well. Then they had a ________ and their business failed.

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

Football Phrase

OK - our football phrase. So regular listeners will know that every week, we challenge you to work out a mystery football word or phrase.

I'm going easy today. I'm going to challenge you to work out one of the top 20 football words so I expect lots of you to get it. The word is ******. The word is a verb and it's the opposite of the verb to attack. In football, some players attack and try to score goals and others ****** their own goal. You can use more generally, out of a football context and it's often collocated with a reflexive pronoun. If you are attacked, you have the right to ****** yourself.

If you know the answer to the football phrase, leave a comment on the podcast page for this podcast on the Premier Skills English website. If you have a football phrase that you would like us to use in the podcast, just get in touch and let us know.

Before I finish I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast and the vocabulary useful and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.