Losing in one Cup might be regarded as unfortunate. Losing in two smacks of carelessness… Getting myself knocked out of both Cups was a PES2008 reality check.

It doesn’t matter if you play well in some games, or even if you play brilliantly in most games. You have to perform consistently in every game to win anything in the Master League.

Chelsea are currently riding high at the top of Division 1. They’ve lost just 2 games all season and are 10 points clear of Man Utd in second place. The lesson for me is clear. Thumping a Division minnow 5-0 every now and again is good for morale and good for goal difference. But if I go out in the next game against a team like Blackburn, say, and manage ‘only’ to draw, or even lose, I’m never going to get anywhere.

Now that I am concentrating solely on the league, I have a full squad of players to draw upon for every game.

Before resuming normal week-by-week league life, I made an adjustment to the First XI. Bradley has shown enough quality to convince me that he should replace Muntari as my automatic first-choice DMF.

I was repaid for my faith in Bradley in his first full game in the First XI. I took on Sunderland - my old enemy - and beat them 4-2.

Bradley really does have it all. Strength, balance, shooting. And a nice dribble too. It really is an easy PES year when routinely even I am going on runs like this, and scoring with a few of them:

I want to finish the season in the top 6 at the very least. The top 2 would be a bonus. I think Manchester United are too far ahead of me to catch them now. There are ten games left and 30 points to play for, though, so anything is possible. I need to win all or most of my remaining games and hope that Man Yoo lose enough of theirs to let me catch up. That almost never happens in PES, though. The teams at the top tend to stick there until the end.

I picked up a couple of 1-0 wins, including a valuable one against the team just beneath me in the table, Liverpool. The winner was a nice diving header by Schwarz from a decent cross by Braafheid.

I’m really glad now that I didn’t get rid of Braafheid in the mid-season negotiations. Pacy SBs who can launch dangerous raids down the wings - and also defend a bit - are hard to come by. And I have two. Guimaraes over on the right side continues to grow into a monster of a player. I keep going on about Schwarz, but Guimaraes has been another success story from the pool of young talent that I assembled back in my first couple of otherwise disastrous seasons.

I’m up to third now and should hold steady until the end of the season. It looks like I’ll be playing at the top European table next season. I’m 9 points ahead of the team in 7th place, and I have a superior goal difference to anyone else in the Division.

I’ve scored 54 goals in 28 games this season. Only Man Utd are anywhere near me in terms of goals scored. However, my goals conceded total is among the very worst - only the teams down in the relegation zone have conceded more. Lucky for me I found my shooting boots this season.

More than 26 years ago, another band of plucky Brits set forth to conquer Europe. Their manifesto was straightforward: overcome the perils of conformism, and single-mindedly dedicate yourself to following the path of individuality. Above all, simply make your mind up, and stick to your decisions thereafter. As uncomplicated as it sounds, it’s one tough prescription to follow.

Faced with a campaign on three fronts - the league, the domestic cup, and garlicky old Europe - the PES Master League player is faced with a dilemma. Who to play, and in what fixtures? Even with a squad packed full of top players in peak form and condition, there will be casualties along the way.

You can field your top strikers in a big league game (and every league game is a big game, rightly considered), but if you then play them in the big Cup game afterward, they’ll likely be unavailable for the next big League game. Either their stamina or their form, or both, will be borked (as I think people still say on the internet).

One solution, if you have a big enough squad, is to make your mind up about which competition is your priority, and formally establish a Second XI of players to play in the lesser competitions. And stick to your decision.

For me, the league is the #1 priority. I doubt I’ll be able to catch Chelsea, but second spot is well within my reach. That would mean automatic qualification for the European Championships (i.e., the Champions League) next season. A top-six finish would be the next best thing. Playing a load of pre-tournament qualifiers in the first weeks of next season would be a pain, but it’d be better than finishing outside the top six and not being there at all. More games means more points for the transfer kitty. And what do points make? That’s right. Prizes.

So the First XI (plus/minus one or two players as circumstances dictate) is the one I want to play in every league game. For the Cup and the European Masters Cup, I came up with a Second XI (pictured left) who would - notionally - always play in those fixtures. In this way I hoped to preserve my good league form, and also give myself a fighting chance of progressing in the two Cups.

It’s a good plan on so many levels. You preserve your first-choice players’ fitness levels, and you give several rising stars a full game.

Bradley in particular is in need of full games right now. I’ve resisted starting with him in the First XI so far because he feels a little bit ‘unfinished’. I think that playing him regularly in Cup games will take him that extra bit further and hopefully establish him as a first-choice regular next season.

All of this is good in theory, right?

If you stick to it, yes. I didn’t stick to it. When it came to the crunch I followed the old advice to always play your best team regardless of other fixtures coming up. Thus I embarked upon my worst run of form and results all season. Things haven’t been this bad since the dark days of 2010.

Out of seven games, I lost five and drew two. Portsmouth thumped me 3-1 at home in the league. Mattsson was sent off in this game. A bad day at the office for everyone.

As for the Cups, the First XI/Second XI thing went out of the window almost straightaway. Before the D1 Cup tie against Arsenal, I saw that Schwarz had an almost-full stamina bar and a red form arrow, and selected him for the game without giving it a second thought. Always play your best team is all well and good. But I had a plan, and I should have stuck with it. I drew the Arsenal cup match and lost the second leg. I also lost the league games in between times.

Espanyol almost contemptuously disposed of me in the Masters Cup. They beat me 3-1 at home, and the fixture at their place ended 1-1. They were all over me in both games. It looks like the standard of play in Europe this year is a lot higher than the domestic game.

So much for Europe. #Don’t let your indecision take you from behind…# How I wish I’d really listened to that sound advice. Coventry City, nul points.

I didn’t realise until now that this season is a season of European football for me. Winning the Division 1 Cup last year automatically qualified me for the European Masters Cup (the game’s UEFA Cup equivalent). Winning the Cup in every other PES has brought European football in its wake, but for some reason this year I completely forgot, or neglected to remember, which amounts to the same thing, really.

Checking out my upcoming European fixture, I see that I’ll be playing Espanyol away in the first leg of a knockout tie. After four-and-a-half seasons of playing the same clubs twice per year, playing a brand-new club with whom I have no prior history just feels weird. The match is a good few weeks away yet. I’m already worried about fixture congestion and how a stamina-challenged squad will cope in all the games. I’ll worry about it when I get there, though.

For now, there’s league games to get through. Europe will look after itself. Finishing as high as possible in the league is the #1 priority.

I thumped Anderlecht 4-1 at their ground. Marcos ruled in this game. He owned. He was 1337. He pwnd them. He - I’ll stop that now. Marcos played most excellently against Anderlecht, and bagged himself this goal:

Marcos is a 24-year-old left-footed CMF/SMF in PES2008. He seems to be a made-up Konami player. I’ve played him in my midfield as the left-sided AMF without any problems at all. He’s been one of the best all-round midfielders I have ever had the pleasure of playing with in any PES.

In the next match against Fenerbahce, he showed that he is more than just a rasping left foot. Fenerbahce had the effrontery to score first. I came back, scoring my equaliser quickly (always good for the nerves, that). Then in the second half I was pressing and pressing for another, but making no headway.

What I love about Marcos is that he’s an effective attacking force, but can also put himself about a bit. If I’m ever short of a DMF, I have no doubt he could play there and do well. On the edge of the Fenerbahce box, I lost the ball to a defender. Up stepped Marcos:

In PES2008, stamina and form is as big an issue for Marcos as for everyone else. However, unlike some players I could mention (Shaw, Shimizu, I’m looking at you two), Marcos can play two games in a row before there’s much of a dent in his stamina bar. Sometimes I can play him for three games in row - league, cup, league again - before having to rest him. My best buy from the Unbelonging list so far? Definitely. Player of the season? Possibly. There’s a ways to go yet.

Marcos simply performs - time and again, game in, game out. Looking at his stats, it’s difficult to see what marks him as so special. It’s psychological with some players, I think. I started well with Marcos, so now when I get him on or near the ball I always believe something special can happen, and I play accordingly - with confidence. It was no surprise to me when Spain came knocking on my door for him.

Marcos’ international call-up meant he was unavailable for the next game, which turned out to be an easy 2-0 league win against Newcastle - sweet revenge for their 1-0 victory back in the second game of the season. My other contender for player of the season, Schwarz, got both of the goals. I haven’t scored with many first-time shots in PES2008. I was happy with this one, as it put the game to rest late in the second half:

Arsenal are next in the Division 1 Cup quarter final. In our recent league match I just couldn’t cope with their skills and teamwork. If I’m going to hold onto that trophy it looks as if I’ll have to do it the hard way.