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.

The wait is over. Last night, Burnley welcomed Manchester City. The teams started their campaigns with the first match of the new season at Turf Moor in Burnley.
I started working on this podcast before the match so I’m not going to talk about the result in this podcast.

At this time of the year, it is the custom on this podcast and in newspapers and sports websites to make predictions about how the different clubs will do over the coming year. The transfer window is still open so there’s a chance that there could still be some big moves that will affect the teams and their chances of Premier League glory, but I think most of the bid deals have been agreed and players, pundits and fans have a pretty good idea about who will be lining up this season.

To prepare for this podcast, I have read a lot of predictions. Actually, I started by thinking about the sorts of language I might use when making predictions, for example, modal verbs and future forms. And then, I read a bunch of predictions and looked for authentic examples of the language. So in my predictions, I’m using phrases I found on news websites and blogs. I’m going to approach these predictions by thinking about five questions:

Question 1. Which teams will struggle to survive?

Question 2. Which team will surprise people the most?

Question 3. Who will be the best player?

Question 4. Who will finish in the top four?

Question 5. Who will win the league?

After I answer each question, I will talk a little bit about the language I used to make my predictions. Your task this week will be to answer these five questions and make your own predictions.

Now, I have decided that I’m going to split this podcast into five parts and release each question, each prediction and language focus as a separate episode. While writing the script, I realised that there’s so much language to talk about that cramming it all into one podcast would be too much and you’d never get the chance to practise using it.

So in this first episode, I’m only going to answer the first question.

But before I make my first prediction, I want to give you the answer to last week’s football phrase.

Last week’s football phrase was a noun. The noun was *******. The role of the ******* of a football team depends on the manager, but they are expected to lead their team and to make sure the team communicates well and that new players, especially younger players are supported by the more experienced team members.

Congratulations to Jaybee Art from Nigeria, Satt from Japan, KareemZain from Egypt, Alex from Ukraine, Vietnguyanngo from Vietnam, Hasan from Turkey, Ken from Japan, Mobeckham from Turkey, AhmadAmr from Egypt, Bicooz from Egypt, Renan from Brazil and Andretorre102 from Brazil, welcome to the podcast AndreTorre102.

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

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

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

Question 1. Which teams will struggle to survive?

In all of the predictions I have read, the two dead-certs for the drop are Luton and Sheffield United. On paper, it’s hard to see how Luton are going to compete. Manchester City have 7 players who are valued at more than the total value of Luton’s squad. When Luton face City, there’s a good chance that every player that City plays will be worth more than Luton’s starting 11. Luton may pull off a few surprises at Kenilworth Road. Some pundits have suggested that the ‘charms’ of the Hatters’ ground might be enough to put off their opponents. However, I don’t think these will ultimately amount to more than embarrassments for their opponents and won’t be enough for Luton to dodge the drop.

Sheffield United have sold Iliman Ndiaye and Sander Berge. The loss of these players will be massive for the Blades and it’s difficult to see how they will survive.

It’s more difficult to predict who will take the third relegation spot. Both Wolves and Fulham have had chaotic summers and some pundits have plumped for Wolves following Julen Lopetegui's exit. However, the season will be a struggle for Bournemouth, Forest, Everton, Palace and West Ham so I’m going to pick Wolves, but I’m not very confident about my prediction.

Language focus

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

• to be a dead-cert for something
• a good chance
• to amount to something, and
• to have plumped for something

A dead-cert for something is something that is very likely. This is quite informal and more common in British English. We used to use the word cert for something that we were certain would happen. If you are certain, you know something and have a strong sense that it is true. However, the term cert is no longer used on its own and only survives in the phrase a dead-cert meaning something that you are very sure will happen. We use it with the preposition for; someone is a dead-cert for something. You might say that your colleague is a dead-cert for a promotion at work if you are very confident that they will get the promotion.

I spoke about a good chance that something will happen recently. If there’s a good chance that something will happen, then it’s likely. You think that it probably will happen. You can also say there’s a slight chance if something is possible but not likely and that there’s no chance at all if you think that something is impossible. There’s an old song from 1932 called I don’t stand a ghost of a chance with you. The collocation to stand a chance is quite common and it means the same as to have a chance or have a possibility. A ghost of a chance is a tiny tiny possibility. In the song, the singer sings about someone that he wants to be with but he doesn’t think that he will be able to attract them. He has no chance at all; he doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance.

To amount to something means to be equal to or to add up to something. Most commonly, it’s used with numbers. If you are adding up a bill in a restaurant, you might ask what the total amounts to. However, I used the phrasal verb to talk about the results of a series of actions. So you can use the phrasal verb to describe the outcome of a series of events or actions. In the prediction, I said that Luton’s home victories would only amount to embarrassments for their opponents. I meant that they would not be enough to help Luton avoid relegation at the end of the season. If I were more optimistic, I could have said that their Kenilworth Road victories might amount to survival in the Premier League.

The last phrase I want to talk about is to plump for something. I got this from one of the predictions I read. I’m not sure I have ever taught this phrase before. I’m not sure I’ve ever written it down; it is quite informal. To plump for something or someone means to choose something or someone after thinking about your choice for a long time. You often hear: What did you plump for in the end? If someone was taking a long time to make a decision. It’s a funny-sounding phrase.

Language Challenge

Your challenge this week is to make your own prediction about which teams are going to struggle to survive in the Premier League this season. I’m going to publish another episode tomorrow with my second prediction and then another and another and another. 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 this week's football phrase. As this podcast is going to be split into five episodes, there will be five football phrases so I hope they will be easy.

This week’s football phrase is a team. That’s a massive clue right away. The fans of this club are known as the Toon Army and the club mascot is a magpie named Monty. Do you know which club is this week’s football phrase?

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. Brendan Rodgers has held Treble-building workshops with his Celtic stars and made it clear he demands ruthless aggression from his players in the hunt for more glory.

Number 2. In 1999, Cleo Lake was a gallery assistant at the Respectable Trade exhibition, the first major exhibition to acknowledge that Bristol was even connected to the trade in enslaved Africans.

Number 3. All of a sudden things are looking up at Chelsea and defender Chilwell who is looking forward to the new season says Pochettino immediately identified they were not fit enough and corrected it straight away.

Number 4. Terminator creator James Cameron says AI has taken over and it's already too late.

Number 5. Former Manchester City playmaker David Silva has said his goodbyes to football as the World Cup winner and four-time Premier League champion was forced to hang up his boots after suffering a serious knee injury in pre-season training at Real Sociedad earlier this month.

Number 6. Dolly Parton said: my personal life philosophy is grounded in my childhood and in my spirituality. I’ve always had a lot of faith.

Number 7. It’s time universities recognised the value of teaching experience instead of hiring based only on the number of publications.

Number 8. Former Leeds United star David Prutton believes that current Whites’ midfielders Brenden Aaronson and Tyler Adams will relish the prospect of playing England in the group stage of the World Cup.

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.