This Week: A tale of two teams

Welcome to This Week from Premier Skills English, a weekly review of football action for learners of English from across the globe. In This Week, Jack talks about three stories from this week in the Premier League and there are lots of football English words and phrases for you to learn.

If the listening was difficult, you can listen and read the transcript at the same time.

Read the transcript and listen at the same time.

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 britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

This week, I want to talk about Everton’s performance against Arsenal when they hosted the league leaders at the weekend. The language focus today is grammar. It’s been ages since I spoke about grammar and this story provided a good opportunity for me to use lots of examples of comparatives and superlatives. The language I’m focusing on is a bit more advanced than your normal grammar lessons on comparatives and superlatives so I hope you find it useful.

Football Phrase

But before I get to this week’s story, 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’s football phrase was to *** ******* ***. This is a passive phrase that means that a team has been beaten in a club competition and is no longer in the competition.

Congratulations to Hiracky16 from Japan, Denis2000 from Belarus, Fabs17 from Italy, Chen Meng Tso from Taiwan, Hsn from Turkey, Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Mk_dir98 from Iran, Eduardo Caicedo from Ecuador and Cezario Abrantes from Brazil. You all worked out the phrase I was looking for was to get knocked out.

Also well done to Oselfa from Spain. You were almost right.

Now it’s time for me to get on with this week’s story. When you listen, I’d like you to try to answer the following questions:

Which team has the oldest players?
Which players missed golden opportunities for Arsenal and Everton?

A tale of two clubs

When Everton sacked Frank Lampard at the end of January, the club was in 19th place in the league, only ahead of last place on goal difference. The Toffees had had their worst ever start to the season and after 20 games, they had collected just 15 points, the fewest of any league season in their history.

Everton hadn’t had a win in their previous 8 Premier League matches, not since they defeated Crystal Palace back in October and the longer they went without a win, the angrier the fans got. The fans had been so angry at recent matches that the board of directors had been ordered not to attend matches on safety grounds. On Saturday, someone was angry enough to pay for a plane to fly over the stadium dragging a banner that read: League’s worst run club.

Their opponents on Saturday were the league leaders Arsenal whose fortunes this season, compared with their hosts, have been as different as night and day.

Arsenal have been playing their best football in 20 years. In fact, this season has seen the Gunners best ever league start. Arsenal won 9 of their first 10 matches and have been leading the league since Matchweek 3.

Mikel Arteta took over at Arsenal in 2019 and has reshaped the squad, bringing in lots of young players. Arsenal have the youngest team in the league and the more they play together, the more confident they become and the better they get. However, when they travelled to Goodison Park, they may have been too confident.

Everton had just appointed Sean Dyche as manager and when a team gets a new manager, all the players are determined to show their new boss their best football. This is a well known phenomenon in football and is known as new manager bounce. On Saturday, the enthusiasm was clear to see as the players pushed harder, ran farther and played with an intensity that the young Arsenal side wasn’t prepared for. Dyche is an experienced manager and was able to revise his tactics during the match to take advantage of Arsenal’s lack of focus. By adjusting the position of his front three, Everton were able to push further up the pitch and make trouble for Arsenal’s defence.

While Everton’s spirited performance wrong-footed the Gunners, there was still plenty of skill on display. Early on, Nketiah made a glorious run and looked sure to score but somehow blasted the ball wide. Everton also had their fair share of bad luck, particularly when Calvert-Lewin delivered a perfectly weighted cross straight into the path of Doucouré who fluffed his chance and headed the ball almost straight into the ground.

Everton eventually broke through after 60 minutes scoring from a well practised set piece. Throughout the match, every Everton corner kick had been played deep. When Dwight McNeil lined up for Everton’s fifth corner kick of the match, Arsenal left James Tarkowski with too much space and he headed the ball into the centre of the goal.

Goodison Park erupted with cheers at the defender’s first goal. McNeil and Tarkowski had played for Dyche at Burnley before coming to Everton. This old Burnley double act were even more motivated to show their old skipper what they could do.

For the last half hour of the match, the tension in the stadium was electric as the fans urged their team to hold on. And they did, securing Everton’s first Premier League win of the year and signalling to fans and the rest of the league that they can do better.

Final score: Everton 1 - Arsenal 0

Before the story, I asked you two questions. The first was: Which team has the oldest players?

The answer is Everton, though I didn’t say that. What you may have heard me way was Arsenal have the youngest team in the league so every other team has older players than Arsenal.

The second question was: Which players missed golden opportunities for Arsenal and Everton?

Nketiah blasted his shot wide for Arsenal and then Doucoure fluffed his chance when he headed the ball into the ground. I like the verb to fluff meaning to make a silly mistake. It’s quite informal. You can use it when you make a mistake that you really shouldn’t have and you hear it quite a lot in football commentary.

In the language focus today, I want to talk about grammar. When I was writing this story about Everton beating Arsenal, I thought it would be a brilliant story to explore ways of comparing the two clubs and then look at the language of comparatives and superlatives. However, when you are learning English, you learn comparatives pretty early and this podcast is normally full of high intermediate and advanced language so I don’t want to cover the simple: is bigger than sort of sentences. In fact, in all the examples of comparatives that I used in the story, I didn't say the word than once.

Now, I’m going to talk about 6 comparative or superlative phrases that I used in the story about Everton and Arsenal that I hope will be interesting for you and will be language that you can use.

Phrase number 1

The first phrase I want to look at is even more. I really like this way of modifying or adding meaning to comparatives because it has a lot of meaning and it’s usually expressive. I said that the old Burnley double act, that’s McNeil and Tarkowski, were even more motivated to show their old skipper what they could do. I mean, all of the players were motivated, but these two were even more motivated. So we use even more to emphasise a difference between things that are already unusual. Here are some examples.

A Tesla is an expensive car but a Ferrari is even more expensive.

Everyone knows that it rains a lot in the UK, but if you visit Manchester, you might discover it rains even more than you think.

Phrase number 2

My son uses this next phrase a lot or rather, variations of this phrase. The first example in the text was this:

The Toffees had had their worst ever start to the season

Their worst ever start. So with superlatives, you can use the adverb ever to say at any time in the history of the world. My son often says things like: this is the best food ever - short for this is the best food I have ever eaten. I don’t think he means in the history of the world ... he’s dramatic, but not that dramatic. You’ll find loads of articles online claiming that they are about the best ever whatever they are about. I’ve just searched and saw there were articles about the best ever car, the best ever album, lots of that sort of thing. SO as well as this dramatic use, you can use it literally. In the article I described Everton’s start to the season as their worst ever and Arsenal’s as their best ever. In both of these examples, I was talking about the number of points they had collected at the start of the season and comparing it with every other season that the club has played in and this really has been Everton's worst ever season and Arsenal’s best ever.

Phrase number 3

A good way to start a comparison in English is to use the phrase compared with or compared to. I said that Arsenal’s fortunes this season, compared with their hosts, have been as different as night and day. I’ll talk about this more later, but I think it would be better to give you some simple examples. You might hear someone say:

Compared to Indian food, Mexican food is not very spicy.

Or

Winters in Scotland are cold, but compared to Poland, they are actually quite mild.

I know there are other places that have cold winters but I live in Scotland now and I used to live in Poland.

So, instead of saying Indian food is spicier than Mexican food or even Mexican food is not as spicy as Indian food, you can say Mexican food is not very spicy, compared to Indian food.

Now when I wrote this, I wondered ... compared to or compared with? You see, often, I have to do research to find the reasons I use certain terms. When you’re speaking fluently, the rules are all automatic so I don’t realise that I’m applying some rule when I choose my language.

So I looked it up and apparently, you can use compared to to highlight similarities and compared with to show differences. However, I don’t think that’s really much use and both compared with and compared to can normally be used without any difference in meaning. Here are three examples I’ve pulled from news stories.

An actress said: I’ve been compared with water.

If she had said, I have been compared to water, would the meaning have been different?

A report in a newspaper said that planning a holiday around reading was cheap when compared with other holidays.

I think that compared to would be fine here.

One more:

Manchester City’s upcoming fixtures are tough compared with Arsenal and Manchester United’s.

Again, I think that compared to would be just as good here.

In the penguin writers manual it says that when compare is used intransitively, it should only take with. And in the Oxford Learners Dictionary there is an example that I agree with. The example is: This school compares with the best in the country. This means that the school is as good as the best schools in the country. Compares to would sound wrong here.

The Cambridge online dictionary highlights that this use of compare means to consider similarities, but I think it’s easier to think of the phrase compares with as meaning is as good as. The example they use is:

Instant coffee doesn’t compare with freshly ground coffee

... which means instant coffee is not as good as freshly ground coffee.

I suggest that you can use compare to and compare with when you include an adjective or quality for the comparison. So a journey might be long when compared to or compared with another journey. A man might be generous compared to or compared with another less generous person.

But you can also use compared with to mean is as good as and then you have to use with. So Arsenal’s defence compares with Manchester City’s. This means Arsenal’s defence is as good as Manchester City’s. Or ... The writer’s most recent novel compares with her earlier work.

Phrase number 4

I want to return to the example from before:

Arsenal’s fortunes this season, compared with their hosts, have been as different as night and day.

Now, I want to talk about the comparison as different as night and day. We use this phrase to say that two things are completely different - they are as different as two things can be.

Another similar phrase is as different as chalk and cheese. This is a weird one. Chalk is a type of soft white rock that teachers use to write on blackboards. I can understand night and day as opposites, but I’m not so sure why chalk and cheese is a saying.

I looked it up and it turns out the phrase has been around since the 13th or 14th century and might have derived from the idea that some hard cheeses look a bit like chalk but are completely different when you put them in your mouth. So things can be as different as night and day and things can be as different as chalk and cheese.

Phrase number 5

The last phrase I want to talk about uses an interesting form. I said:

The longer they went without a win, the angrier the fans got.

This is quite a common structure. The more something, the more something else.

You’ll often hear the phrase the bigger, the better, for example if you love pizza and someone says that they only have really big pizzas, you might say. The bigger, the better. Or if you are having a party and more people turn up than you had invited, some guests might apologise for coming without an invitation and you might tell them> Don’t worry, the more, the merrier.

So we use this form to link two ideas. I said the more the young Arsenal team play together, the more confident they become.

OK. I hope that these five structures and phrases that you can use with comparative and superlative language are useful. Listen to the story one more time and try to concentrate on these forms.