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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Manchester United, Manchester City and John Terry

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In this week’s review section, we look back at stories from the big Manchester derby and the fallout from the racism row with England captain John Terry and QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. You can listen to these and other stories on our weekly podcast and can find explanations of key vocabulary in bold below, or highlighted in blue.

Good

Both the good and the bad come from the same Premier League match last weekend: Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City. City move five points clear of their rivals at the top of the table and maybe now the so-called pundits will sit up and take notice that they are real title challengers. This was the first time that the Sky Blues had netted six in a Manchester derby, while they also equalled their previous best derby score and Premier league score at the weekend.

Bad

As for United it was one of their darkest days as they conceded six goals at home for the first time since 1930 as they suffered their heaviest ever loss in the Premier League. It was also the biggest defeat at Old Trafford since the 1950s – a remarkable scoreline when you take into account that the Red Devils only dropped two points in the whole of last season. It will be interesting to see how Ferguson their manager responds to this defeat.

Ugly

Following on from the Suarez-Evra racism row another alleged – and we have to use this word as nothing has been proved – racist incident in football has emerged after the West London derby between QPR and Chelsea last week. This time, England captain John Terry is being investigated for allegedly racially insulting QPR defender Anton Ferdinand – an allegation that Terry categorically denies. Perhaps the real ugliness lies with the governing body of football in England, the Football Association, who surely need to take a strong stand and eliminate racism from the game by actively getting involved in education programmes and severely punishing any players or fans that use this form of abuse. Time to stop paying lip service otherwise these sorts of stories will keep on surfacing.

Vocabulary

had netted: had scored

alleged: Not proven yet but a form of accusation

conceded six goals: Let in 6 goals, allowed 6 goals to go in

paying lip service: talking but don’t acting; making promises but not carrying them out

categorically denies: 100% denies the allegation, the player has said that he did not do this

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