Every week, languagecaster.com brings you words or phrases from the footballing news. This week we explain the cliche ‘Too good to go down”. You can understand more about the word or phrase by reading the transcript below. You can also find many more examples by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.
Listen here: Too good to go down
This week we introduce the football cliche, ‘too good to go down’. This cliche is usually used at the beginning of the football season to talk about a big team that has started poorly. Perhaps after five matches a big team has not yet won a game and is therefore in the relegation zone. If you looked at the table and it was the same at the end of the season the team would be relegated. This is when many pundits and football fans will say, “This team is too good to go down.” They mean, the team will start winning soon and will not be relegated; the idea of a big team going down a division is ridiculous. This season, Liverpool, traditionally a big club in the Premier League have not won a game and are in 18th position and many people are saying, “Liverpool are too big to go down.” However, there is a variation of this cliche, “No team is too big to go down.” This is used at the end of a season when a big team is in danger of being relegated. When Leeds United were relegated in 2007, many wise football pundits said, “No team is too big to go down.”
Too big to go down
