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From BBC News Report:

Leicester City Football Club, whose entire squad cost less than a single player at some of its better-known rivals, have won the English Premier League.

Leicester were 5000-1 outsiders to win at the start of the season, meaning bookmakers considered it more likely that Elvis Presley would be found alive.

Don't understand why "5000-1 outsiders" instead of "5000-1 outsider".

Community
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CRIMX
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    It's referring to a team of people - and that is the terminology we use in British English. – TrevorD May 04 '16 at 23:52
  • I'm sure there are a dozen (duplicate) questions floating around here addressing the issue of whether a sport team is singular or plural, but I'm too lazy to look them up. (Basic answer: It's a UK/US thing.) – Hot Licks May 05 '16 at 00:02

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I'm not sure this entirely applies here, but there is a lesser discussed grammar rule concerning whether to use the singular or plural when talking about groups of people. Whenever you're referring to singular objects which represent groups of people (people being a plural concept), the decision to make the verb singular or plural depends on the context of the sentence, and whether or not the members of the group are acting as one or as individuals.

My favorite set of examples is the following:

Congress were arguing about whether or not to pass the bill.

vs.

Congress agrees that the bill should be passed.

When the situation denotes that the group's members are acting in varying ways (they could be disagreeing, like in the first example), a plural verb is appropriate. Yet when the group's members are acting similarly, you can safely use the singular since these individual actors are behaving as though a singular object.

So yeah, I mean in your example Leicester's players are still technically acting "similarly" in that they're all outsiders, but I suppose the report used the plural to emphasize the fact that a football club is a pretty substantial organization of individuals.

Nick
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Were is the verb in the plural associated with the plural noun outsiders. Five-thousand-to-one is being used as a compound adjective in this construct.

Stu W
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  • But in British English (and we're talking about a British football team here), we would not normally refer to a football team - nor any other sports team - in the singular in the way you suggest in your second paragraph. – TrevorD May 05 '16 at 00:02
  • Agreed. I edited. I'm too American for my own good. – Stu W May 05 '16 at 00:08