Football Phrase of the Week: Cutting edge

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Football Phrase of the Week: Cutting edge

In this football phrase of the week we look back at Manchester United vs Arsenal game and the phrase, ‘cutting edge‘. You can read the transcript for this post below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have any suggestions or questions then you can contact us at admin@languagecaster.com.

Cutting edge

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DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Languagecaster team and I hope you are all doing well. Welcome to this week’s football phrase – a couple of days late, apologies for that. This, of course, is when we look back at some of the language from the previous weekend’s football. So, in this week’s football expression we explain, ‘cutting edge‘ which came from the Premier League game between Manchester United and Arsenal.

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The game finished 1-1 with the hosts Manchester United taking the lead just before half time before Arsenal equalised in the second half. Arsenal had lots of possession and dominated the game but were unable to create too many clear chances; they lacked a cutting edge; they had no attacking threat. So, lacking a cutting edge in football suggests that a team struggles to score a goal or even to create a chance. This might be because they don’t have a top class striker; they don’t have enough firepower or maybe they don’t have enough creativity in their team. This seems to be the case for Arsenal as they dominated the ball but were unable to find a way past the opposition defence – they lacked a cutting edge.

• Example: Arsenal dominated the opening 45 minutes at Old Trafford but lacked any cutting edge (BBC.co.uk)

In another recent Premier League game, West Ham were beaten by Newcastle at home despite having lots of possession of the ball. According to the BBC they, ‘barely threatened the Newcastle goal, with the rare attacks they did have breaking down once they got to the final third.’ This means that when they approached the final third; that’s their opponents‘ penalty area – they didn’t cause any trouble for the defence; they lacked firepower or any cutting edge.

We have seen that the phrase, ‘cutting edge‘ often appears with ‘lack‘ – the team is missing something, it does not have enough cutting edge (they lack a cutting edge) but sometimes it can be used in a more positive way. In the following example, we can see that Pep Guardiola’s experience and focus is an advantage for his Manchester City side:

• Example: Relentless Pep Guardiola’s laser focus gives Manchester City cutting edge (Guardian.co.uk, May 11 2024)

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Can you think of any more examples like this? And how would you say this expression, ‘cutting edge’ or ‘to lack a cutting edge‘ in another language that you know? Does your favourite team currently have a cutting edge or does it need a little bit more? Let us know by dropping us a line at admin@languagecaster.com.

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Yes, that message was in Vietnamese. Enjoy all the football and we’ll see you again later on in the week in our regular weekly podcast show when we’ll be looking ahead to the weekend’s fixtures – there are some huge games around Europe this weekend. And of course we’ll be explaining more football language. Bye bye.

Football Language Glossary

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