The Gaffer

An attacking midfielder playing as the focal of the attack rather than an out and out striker. The main purpose of this is to have an extra creative player who can drop in to the midfield as required and give the opposition centre backs something different to think about. Should the centre backs choose to track the false 9, the leave space behind for the wingers to exploit. Should they choose to not track, they leave a creative attacking player with space to do damage.

"Juego de posición" in Spanish. Players occupy zones rather than fixed positions, maintain good spacing, and create overloads in key areas. Originally developer by Cruyff, Guardiola refined it. The idea is structure over improvisation - everyone knows where they should be relative to the ball and their teammates. Unlike total football's constant position-swapping, it stays organised while allowing creativity within that framework.

A player who turns up for the biggest games and performs to a high standard, e.g. cup finals, title deciders etc. Other players can get labelled as players who only turn up against smaller teams.

An initialism for Financial Fair Play. Introduced by UEFA as a way to prevent clubs spending beyond their means. The basic idea: you can't spend more than you earn, with some allowances for infrastructure and youth investment. Clubs that break the rules can face fines, transfer bans, or even exclusion from European competitions. Manchester City and PSG have both been investigated, though the punishments rarely seem to stick. UEFA replaced FFP with new "Financial Sustainability" rules in 2022, but people still call it FFP.

Spreading the cost of a transfer fee across the length of the player's contract for accounting purposes. A £100m signing on a 5-year deal costs £20m per year on the books, not £100m upfront. It matters for Financial Fair Play and profit/loss calculations. Clubs use it to make expensive signings look more affordable. Understanding amortisation explains a lot of weird transfer behaviour.