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Football Phrase of the Week: Throw away a lead


Football Phrase of the Week: Throw away a lead

In this football phrase of the week we explain the expression, ‘to throw away a lead‘ after Arsenal drew 2-2 with Aston Villa in the Premier League at the weekend. You can read the transcript for this podcast 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.


Throw away the lead

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DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Languagecaster team and I hope you are all doing well. And welcome to our latest football phrase of the week and this week we will look at the expression, ‘to throw away a lead‘. And this is after Arsenal’s draw at home to Aston Villa in the Premier League at the weekend.

Recently, we looked at the expression, ‘to stretch their lead‘ which means that a team increases, or extends, their lead in a game. So for example, a team is winning 1-0 and then scores another goal to make it 2-0 we can say that they have stretched their lead; they have increased their lead. The opposite to this, I suppose, is when the winning team allows the opposition to come back into the game. And we can use the expression, ‘to throw away a lead‘ to describe this situation, especially if the winning team is playing well and dominating the other side. And this is what happened on Saturday when Arsenal were comfortably leading 2-0 but then allowed Aston Villa to score twice in the second half to equalise. Arsenal threw away a lead; they threw away a two-goal lead.

The idea of ‘throw away a lead‘ suggests that Arsenal should have won the game easily but instead they only got one point from the game – they allowed a two goal lead to slip is another way of saying this, while we also use the phrase, ‘blow a lead‘ or ‘blow a two goal lead‘.

‘Arsenal had a late goal disallowed as they dropped (two) points in the Premier League title race after throwing away a two-goal lead at home to Aston Villa.’

So, in this example from the BBC we can see that Arsenal were winning but were then pegged back by Aston Villa – they ended up drawing the game (they dropped two points). It looked like they were going to have an easy three points until Villa scored twice meaning that Arsenal threw away a two-goal lead.

Can you think of any more examples like this? And how would you say this expression, ‘to throw away a lead‘ in another language that you know? Let us know by dropping us a line at admin@languagecaster.com.

Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (in Irish)

Yes, you are listening to Languagecaster and that message was in Irish. And we’ll be back with some more football language in our podcast later on in the week when we will be looking back at some of the language from this week’s Champions League group stage games.

Enjoy all the football and we’ll see you soon. Bye bye.

More Examples

  • Example: Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag says he is responsible for his side’s tendency to throw away leads in the Champions League (BBC.co.uk November 2023)
  • Example: Barcelona threw away a 2-0 lead and saw their La Liga hopes receive a major setback as they drew at Levante. (BBC.co.uk May 2021)

Related Terms

Football Language Glossary



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