Football, without much doubt, is the most popular sport in the world. Some of you may refer to the game as soccer, but in the majority of the world it is called football. Whatever you prefer to call it, it is a game that is the obsession of millions of people across the planet. One league that attracts a lot of attention globally – perhaps more than any other – is the English Premier League. It is home to some of the best players and club teams in the world. It is also home to some of the oldest football clubs in the world. The names of the clubs are so well-known that we may not often reflect on how downright curious and quaint some of the names are. The names include Aston Villa, Brighton and Hove Albion, Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace, and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Where on earth did these fantastical names come from? In this lesson, your students will find out. They will also hone their speaking skills for the Individual Oral and prepare to tackle (poor pun intended) Paper 1, Guided Textual Analysis. This page – available to subscribers here – completes our non-literary body of work on the BBC podcast, Word of Mouth. We hope you and your students enjoy working with the materials.

David and Tim