FOOTBALL MANAGER - THE END, AND A NEW BEGINNING.

Manchester City have lost to Liverpool, obviously. Liverpool are now top of the Premier League, having won 12 games on the row. They’re doing so well, they can even afford to pay their staff. Raheem Sterling has broken his leg on international duty. Ederson has had a strop because I forgot to offer him a new contract. And now three other players have had a strop because they are upset on HIS behalf. I told them to sod off. City batter Crystal Palace but draw 0-0. Liverpool win again. They are by now 5 points clear, having won 14 on a row, because I drew against Chelsea the previous week. Riyad Mahrez is routinely crap, and seems to be continuously “nervous” during matches, requiring me to administer a weekly rousing half-time speech to raise his spirits. It has little effect. The players are knackered. FM 20 does not like Gabriel Jesus on the left, so I have no one suitable to play there, except scaredy-pants Mahrez. City only need to avoid defeat in Porto to top their Champions League group, and have Sunderland in the Carabao Cup, but things could be better. And I simply don’t know how to make things better, when every game has to be won in order to win the league. I apologise Pep, this isn’t as easy as I had hoped, and there is no respite. No wonder you’re always twitching.
I’m done.
Yep, I’m abandoning Football Manager. I’m a quitter, and I don’t mind admitting it. But not just because of the results.

After all, City won their first 11 league games. As I call it a day, they have 35 points from 14 games. That’s pretty damn good. Pretty damn good isn’t enough though. Not against Jurgen and his energy drinks. For them, it just means more. But that’s not really the point. Because it gradually dawned on me I’m playing with the wrong team, on the wrong version of the game. It is time for a reboot.

Football Manager 20 is amazing, no doubt about it. A technical masterpiece, I find it hard to fault. But like many others, it’s not for me. It’s just too much, a sensory overload and a guzzler of time that I don’t have. OK, right now I DO have the time, but that’s not the point. I just feel there’s better ways to spend it. I’ve invested too much time and emotion in real football, I cannot afford to spend 10 hours on a single virtual season in case it does not go to plan. There’s two new episodes of Better Call Saul to watch, after all. There’s a train robbery to plan on Red Dead Redemption 2. When you consider you can instruct any player to do anything, it becomes a full-time job trying to get the absolute maximum out of the team you manage. I started reading a book on how Pep’s tactics work, then suddenly it dawned on me that I was investing far too much into all of this.

Because the problem is, the more detailed such games become, the more you need to know to succeed. And I don’t know enough. You need to be a real-life manager and tactical guru to get the most out of a team. Scouting a few gems will only get you so far. You can delegate all decisions to your assistant manager, but then what’s the point of playing if you do that? You’re just pressing buttons then. And it was actually getting stressful. I realised I was in a mood one evening not because of a global pandemic, but because I could not decide how to balance how much training I should dedicate to different formations. That was the final straw.

Yep, I’m playing the wrong version, and the wrong team. For me, the choice is clear, and it dawned on me early on in my virtual season. The true enjoyment in Football Manager/ Championship Manager was always the challenge of taking a “smaller” club to glory, and up the football pyramid. Balancing the budget, not tiring out players, some canny buys, and on a version that allowed you to play a season in under an afternoon, if need be.

And most importantly, stripped of the tedium of newer versions. No media duties, no agent discussions, no newspaper reports, social media updates or loan reports on 74 U19 players. Just your main squad, a reserve squad to dip into if necessary and lots of games. I’d prefer the match graphics from the newer versions, but you can’t have it all.

So which “smaller” club have I gone for, after all the soul-searching? Erm, Manchester City, the 2001/02 version, on Championship Manager. Ok, I’ve back-tracked on my original decision. But hey, they’re a team that needs restoring to former glories, so it’s still the sort of challenge I was looking for. It might be a squad that contains Eyal Berkovic and Ali Bernarbia, but one wants to leave and the other is no spring chicken. I will have my work cut out making them a power again. Maybe I should just try and keep my job for 7 years, and wait for the takeover. Ten minutes in, and I already know this is going to be a much more fun ride. Shauny is promoted to the seniors, along with a very promising 16-year-old named Lee Croft, a few spare parts are sold (no names provided), and I’m good to go with my 4-1-2-1-2 formation.  Fingers crossed.

I’ll be honest, CM 01/02 is hardly perfect. It has its foibles, to say the least. For 47 consecutive free-kicks, Eyal Berkovic’s shot has “deflected off the wall”. The game action is via text reports only – I actually like them, but there’s a lack of variety in the game scenarios. Too many chipped balls forward for my liking. Injury time is announced 5 minutes before the normal time ends, which for some reason infuriates me. Eyal Berkovic demanded a transfer, I refused, and his morale remained high. Keepers make on average 5 or 6 finger-tip saves a match – that or they push it round the post. And this is the 2^nd tier of English football. I have money to buy players, but cannot get anyone away from their clubs however much money I throw at them, because the clubs consider them indispensable. Thus for now I am relying on scouring for free agents or loan deals from Premier League clubs. There are only 5 subs, and the transfer window is open all year round. I won Manager Of The Month despite losing my previous two games.

But hey, there’s no VAR, and whatever its faults and foibles at the end of the day it is fun and it is accessible. I can dip in and be playing a game within 30 seconds. I can manage 5 games in 20 minutes, or I can delve into other areas of the club and take my time. The choice is there. It’s ridiculously addictive. It’s the past, and it’s the future as I try and fill ever-slowing time. Let’s hope that in the coming weeks, the glory days will return to my virtual City team. I’m guessing Eyal Berkovic won’t be a part of that, though.