Teams full of talent and top-flight experience know when to engage a tackle at crucial times, when to compete in an aerial duel or seize on a chance - often resulting in the net rippling.
The archetypal No. 10 is a skillful player who is more interested in being in possession than tracking to get the ball back.
I'm never going to be one of these players who dribbles past three and bends it into the top corner from 25 yards. That's not me.
I am just a normal bloke. I take my kids to parties, put the bins out.
It was good I left Brighton on a high, like I left Palace on a high but whether Carlisle to Rochdale or Brighton to Palace, as soon as I left that chapter was closed.
Rather than just sit there, I would prefer to get out and play football. Brighton have let me do that.
My wife is from Brighton so I got a bit of stick for going to Palace even though in my first three-and-a-half years at Brighton I didn't actually face them. So I don't think I completely understood the rivalry.
I've had the privilege of playing in our top seven leagues and the main differences when stepping up are organisation, athleticism and decisiveness. Believe me, the gap is even more evident when you achieve the holy grail of the Premier League.
Tactics, gameplan and players are all influential in how a team performs but the question is how to manage every individual in your charge and get them to play like a finely tuned orchestra.
Football can give everyone who loves the game their great moments and most dreadful disappointments. All it takes is a couple of bad injuries or decisions to turn a season and that's just the unforgiving nature of sport.
I've had many strike partners over the years and usually their aim is to outscore you - and take great pleasure in doing so.
The space between keepers and defenders is referred to as the 'corridor of opportunity' - a well-hit pass in there has the goalie questioning whether to come into traffic and defenders unsure of whether or where to clear the ball.
It was through the Hammerheads that I got a route into the professional game, via a trial at Sunderland from Mick McCarthy and then an invitation to come back to Carlisle in 2004.
As a teenager, I was in the Carlisle schoolboy scheme and while I was excited to join at first, I look back on it as a tough few years.
Stadium tunnels are often tight and filled with testosterone. With that combination of a confined space and emotions running high you get the ideal scenario for confrontation.
