One of my players may have to go. When the mid-season negotiations come along, I may have to exchange him for another player, or even release him.

I’m talking about my talented left-sided AMF, Melengue. (Actually he’s right-footed, but can play on either side.) Of late I have started to go on wonder dribbles with him. What is a wonder dribble? This is a wonder dribble:

That’s a goal I scored with my right-back, Guimaraes, in my last Master League career.

People who have not played PES2008 on the PS3 (or on the Xbox360 or PC) have a hard time believing that goals like the above were scored on Top Player difficulty. They look like goals scored on Beginner difficulty in old-gen PES.

But no: they’re scored on Top Player, and they’re easy to do in every game, against any opposition, with almost any player if you’re determined enough. This is precisely why so many of us are down on next-gen PES2008. You have to see it and experience it for yourself to (dis)believe it. (How could they ever have thought it would pass muster? Curse you, Seabass.)

By my own House Rules I am not allowed to have any players who are—or who might become—routine wonder dribblers in the Guimaraes/Elcherino mode. Most players can do the wonder dribble, but with a certain type of player (far too many) it’s effortless to do the wonder dribble.

And Melengue looks as if he’s turning into a wonder dribbler.

He scored my winner in a 0-1 victory at Liverpool. It was a bit of a wonder dribble, beating two men on the wing, cutting inside and beating two more, and slotting the ball home with insulting ease. In any PES before PES2008, scoring a goal like that would have had me off my seat and running around the room, screaming like a lunatic. Really. But in next-gen PES2008, such goals are as common as muck. I barely twitched an eyelid and I didn’t even watch the replay.

Melengue was unfit for the next game against top-of-the-table Man Utd. This one ended 2-2, a result I was happy with after going behind twice. I had Matuzalem sent off late on. That was my first red card this season.

Melengue was back against Newcastle, and again scored the winner in a 1-0 victory—and again it was a wonder dribble.

People can say: don’t use the wonder dribble. But with the player on the park and the ball at his feet, where is the line to be drawn? Are one-twos to be banned as well, because of the ease with which they can scythe open a CPU defence at certain times?

For me, the only way to deny myself the use of the wonder dribble is not to play with those players who can do it easily. This is an alarming number of players—who has ever heard of Melengue?!

I’ll be keeping a careful eye on him. If he keeps it up, I’ll bench him and then get rid of him in the mid-season negotiations.

I’ve made a pretty good start here in Superleague Division 1, considering that I’m running under several self-imposed rules designed to make this game—the easiest-ever PES—a bit more difficult, at least for a time.

Game 4 of the season was against AC Milan. I worked off some of the bad feeling from my game against Real Madrid with a relatively straightforward 2-0 win.

The best of my goals was from Rasnic. The enigmatic AMF seems to pick and choose his games to play well, but always delivers the goods when he does—

—I like this goal because it’s a pretty rare example (for me) of a first-time snapshot on the turn.

Next-gen PES2008 has a built-in pause when human players receive the ball in and around the edge of the box. The pause only lasts for a split-second but it’s definitely there. It’s most noticeable when receiving the ball in a good position to shoot from long distance. The game enforces a slight delay before letting you try the shot. This pause usually makes quick turns and first-time snapshots like the Rasnic one above pretty difficult or actually impossible—the CPU players swarm all over you before you have a chance to shoot. (I’m going to be talking about that pause a lot over the next week.)

Another thing that I’ve just noticed is a very strange line of commentary from John Champion that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Occasionally when you have a headed shot, he’ll say something like “Header too!” Or is it “Header two”? Or “Header to”? Whichever one it is, it is complete nonsense. Unless I’m drastically mishearing the line. Which I might be.

I must have heard the line a couple of hundred times by now, but it was only this morning that I thought, hang on, “Header too”? What the hell?

Perhaps the controversy raging in my mind put me off my stride a little. I lost my next game against Espanyol 2-1. It was not a good game. Thankfully I returned to form in the next game, which ended Atletico Madrid 0-3 Singers FC.

That was more like it, and keeps me in amongst the big boys at the top of the table. All in all I’ve got to be very happy with the opening of this season.

The mighty Real Madrid were my second opponents in my first season here in Division 1 of this Superleague what I created…

I was slightly worried about taking on Madrid so soon. My exertions against Valencia had left the squad more than a little drained of energy.

I had to send out the team pictured on the left, with a couple of players on low stamina. Gutierrez played only because he had to—there was no one else to play in that forward role. Melengue played up there only because he had to as well. My other strikers, Kmolo and Lagutz, were both knackered after the previous game.

At least there were a good few players with red form arrows, among them Marcelo. In the match I took Marcelo on lots of foraging runs down the left wing, jinking in and out of challenges and generally making a nuisance of himself.

But I couldn’t get through Madrid’s defence. It wasn’t that I was taking shots only to see them fly wide, or be saved by the goalkeeper, or hit the post and/or crossbar: I was not getting through at all. There seemed to be a peculiar magic at work that caused all of my attacks to come to nothing, simply fizzling out before I could get a sight of goal.

I started to get frustrated and hack at the legs of the CPU players. I was lucky to get to half time without a red card.

I calmed down in the second half, and the pattern of the game changed. I launched wave after wave of attacks and started to have lots of shots on goal, but they were palmed away or blocked.

A goal for Real Madrid was in the air—you can always smell it coming—and about ten minutes from the end, it came. It was a heartbreaking own-goal from Maldini:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hSojItflg&rel=1]

That Madrid striker’s header was going so wide it’s untrue.

I never had a chance to get back into the game, and that was that. 0-1. Gutted. As happens so often in PES2008, the match stats and the match result are at odds with one another:

Never mind. The game is what it is, and if I don’t like it then I should go play FIFA, right? Ahem.

After the Real Madrid game it felt almost anti-climactic to play the next fixture against PSV. There are several teams in the Superleague Division 1 who aren’t what you’d call top-drawer material. Still, with my transfer embargo in place, picking up 3 points against these lesser teams is an absolute must.

And pick up 3 points is what I did. I won 4-3. It was a good game with a few too many goals for my liking, but I’ll take it.

My next game is against AC Milan. I’m loving this Superleague…