PES Chronicles

As I whined about yesterday, the game seems to have stepped things up a notch since I went top of the table just before the middle of the season. My on-again/off-again/on-again love-hate-love-hate relationship with Sunderland in PES2008 has taken a new twist. They were my next league opponents. I was more than a little chagrined to find myself 3-0 down by half time.

As usual, Sunderland’s world-famous striker Daryl Murphy played like the unstoppable, wonder-dribbling, simply irrepressible force of nature that we all know him to be from his real-life performances in the Premier League. The greatest footballer of this or any other generation scored a hat trick as my feeble defenders struggled to stop him and failed. Daryl was immune to any and every challenge as he powered his way through my entire defence just like he does every week in real life. I was lucky not to concede 5 goals to the maestro before half time.

Somehow I pulled myself together. I changed things around slightly by moving Melengue up to the left-sided CF role in place of the ineffective Leonardo, and bringing on Rasnic in the left-sided AMF slot.

The effect was immediate. I got a couple of goals back with Rasnic, including this one (eerily reminiscent of a similar long-ranger from Camacho)—

—-to make it 3-2. Then I scrambled the equaliser with Gutierrez just before the end. 3-3. I had to settle for that.

I took on PSV at their place and won 1-4. Liked it. Things felt natural again. Things are always going to feel unnatural when the game’s beating you, because the only way it can beat you is to handicap you in some way. Most of the time.

I played Parma and Benfica in the next two games and drew them both, 2-2 and 1-1 respectively. These were pretty good games. I felt they were fairly balanced. That’s what Team Seabass should be working on, I think: redressing the AI/human imbalance that has crept into the franchise over the past few years. The AI advantage shouldn’t need to be turned up to 11, ever.

Here’s another goal from the apple of my eye, Mathieu:

I was trying to go on a wonder-dribble with Camacho, but he’s not able for it (not yet) so I had to lay the ball off to Mathieu, with the outcome that can be seen. No, it’s still not a true forty-yard net-burster into the postage stamp corner, but it’ll come. I’m sure of it. Mathieu just keeps getting better and better. His value as a DMF is immense. When he plays (and it’s a rare game when he doesn’t), the opposition has a tough time making things happen down the middle and just in front of my penalty box.

—————-

My recent run of poor and indifferent results means that I’m hovering just on the outer edge of the promotion places: hanging onto 3rd place by goal difference, and only 6 points clear of the 5th-placed team.

However, I’m only two points off top spot. I could—and should—still have a great chance of winning the championship.

But securing promotion comes first. Another poor run could see me drop out of contention altogether. The seasons in PES2008 are long and tiring, and I do not want to go through this again. I really, really want promotion this year.

Maximum concentration is required for every game from now on. I’m itching to see what life will be like for me in Division 1 of this Superleague.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Mathieu, goal replay.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.