Apart from that awful 1-8 defeat in the opening league game at the hands of Sparta Rotterdam, which I’m still shuddering about now, I’m actually doing quite well at the start of season 2011.

It’s my 5th season in Division 2 on last-gen PES2008 after several months spent playing the next-gen offering. The adjustment phase has taken a little longer than I thought it would.

My game is starting to come together—finally, after however many seasons it’s been. I’m defending well and conceding fewer goals. The Sparta game really was an anomaly—it was a wake-up call, if anything. I’m also scoring a few goals and getting results. But I’m not getting carried away. I’ve had false dawns before on this game. At the start of last season I thought I had things all worked out, and look what that got me: a miserable finish, my squad cut in half for financial reasons, and an eight-goal thrashing to boot.

I’ve won a couple more games and drawn another. I’m unbeaten in the league since that terrible opening fixture.

And now along comes the Division 2 Cup. I was drawn against Almeria.

I was very, very motivated for the Cup. A great cup run would do so much for my stuttering Master League career. Not just in financial terms—although that would be very welcome indeed; I really need to replenish my squad in the mid-season negotations—but also to get my team popularity rank up, so I can attract better players to my club.

The first leg against Almeria was at my place. I played well, using all the patience and skill I’ve learned over the past few games. I went 2-0 up and things stayed that way until the last minute.

When the CPU is behind in PES2008 on PSP/PS2, I’ve noticed that the merest brush against one of its players results in a free kick. Finally I have seen for myself just what people have been complaning about for the past five months. Next-gen PES2008 has its faults (boy does it have them), but I never felt that the CPU won cheap free kicks. Yes, it scored free kicks cheaply, but at least they were all awarded in the first place in a realistic, non-dodgy way.

An Almeria player lost the ball and one of my players ran off with it. The whistle blew for a CPU free kick. Of course it did. The free kick was about 30 yards out. What was going to happen next? Anyone?

The resulting free kick was the most perfectly-struck, perfectly-placed free kick in the history of football, real or virtual. It arrowed straight and true toward the top corner. At least my keeper, Lehmann, got a hand to it. But the rebound squirmed off to one side at a preposterous angle and speed—directly into the path of a following-up CPU player. 2-1, and the final whistle went. I was pretty disgusted. If the game had finished 2-0 to me at home, then the second leg would have been a formality. But we couldn’t have that, could we? So a nice little CPU away goal had to happen.

In the second leg, the CPU got its goal early and the game stayed that way despite me attacking almost constantly. Every shot flew wide, hit the post or crossbar, or was acrobatically saved.

1-0 to Almeria, 2-2 on aggregate. Almeria went through on away goals.

So it was bye-bye to the cup. I was almost literally open-mouthed at how blatant the scripting was over the two games. Seabass doesn’t even do us the courtesy of trying to conceal it any more.

Oh well. Now I can concentrate on the league.

*cringes with shame*

Yes. I lost 8-1. The CPU put eight goals past me. I conceded EIGHT times in Pro Evolution Soccer—a resounding first and, I hope, a last. I don’t know how I even managed to get 1. Take a look at the CPU’s Shots on goal…

Now is it obvious that I’ve never been ‘playful with the truth’ by saying I’m only an average PES player? At the moment I’m not even average. I’m way below average. I’m playing terribly.

In mitigation (there isn’t much), I was playing on the PSP for the first time after a long weekend on the PS2 version (played on my PS3). The game is just different enough on the two consoles for things to feel awkward immediately after a transition from one to the other.

It still doesn’t excuse the scoreline. Nothing excuses it. Not even my new slimmed-down squad can really be seen as a reason why I lost 8-1. The screenshot on the left shows exactly what I see when I look for substitutes mid-game—it’s scary stuff, having so few players to choose from.

But this was the first game of the season and none of my First XI—all decent players—were even tired. No excuses there.

I was hoping for a good start after having to lay off a load of players to avoid a Game Over after last season. And this is what I get. 8-1.

I also had four players sent off. It was due to my old bad habit of getting one sent off, and going a few goals behind, and trying too hard to get a goal back while defending deperately, and having another sent off, and conceding more goals, and losing all hope and discipline…

When I was 6-0 down I received my fourth red card—Handanovic, my keeper, dismissed for bringing down a Sparta player in the box. I was so befuddled and demoralised that I let Jaric go in goal for the rest of the game.

With 7 men on the pitch I did try my best to get another one sent off and the game abandoned. Would the CPU have been awarded ‘only’ a 3-0 win? I never got to find out. The CPU scored another two goals, and I somehow got a consolation goal, and that was humiliatingly that.

At times in PES you just have to lick your wounds and get on with it. I played game 2 of the new season straightaway. Things couldn’t get any worse. Could they?

It was tricky to field a team. Four of my players were suspended. Lehmann stepped into goal. Don’t get him sent off whatever you do, I told myself. I had to play Che Hyon-Hon at left back.

With my trimmed-down team and squad, I dug deep. I concentrated. I defended with discipline and care , and ground out a precious 2-1 victory.

I’m 6th in the table, just 3 points from the top, although my goal difference is naturally the worst in Division 2 by a long way. I could still do something this season, I think. But will those 8 goals conceded cost me at season’s end?

Disaster has struck. It’s not a fatal disaster, but it could well become one. I’m paying the natural and inevitable price for not yet being very good at PES2008. I’ve been in this kind of position before, but not for a long time. I hope I can remember how to get out of it. Let me explain.

In the season just gone—season 2010—I finished bottom of the league. I won only 2 games all season (again) and scored a paltry handful of goals.

The problem is that at the end of the previous season, anticipating success, I spent big in the transfer market. I took on too many players at too high a cost.

Now my salary bill is 8500 points. And I’ve got just 5400 points in the bank.

Anyone unfortunate or careless enough ever to find themselves in a similar position in Master League knows that there’s a GAME OVER screen with my name on it waiting for me at the end of this negotiation period if I don’t take drastic action.

I’ve only ever had a proper GAME OVER in PES once. It came way back in PES2. That was my first PES with a Master League and the whole concept was new to me. I unthinkingly blundered into disaster after my very first season. I overspent, couldn’t claw the money back, and it was all over. Even then I operated my strict policy of never reloading, of playing every game once and once only. Every outcome, on or off the field, was the only outcome there was allowed to be. I had to take the GAME OVER and start again.

And that’s what I’ll have to do this time as well, if I can’t avoid it.

First things first: playing the maximum number of pre-season friendlies. Winning a few of these would mean only losing one player, or even none at all if I won enough. I didn’t win any of them, though. I drew one and lost three. I’m no good at PES2008 right now. That’s why I’m in this position.

The other thing to do: put players on the transfer list en masse. Which is what I did. I was delighted after one negotiations week to see two CPU teams make bids for Ruskin. Great! But then I checked the bids.

I don’t know if this is a bug or what, but each of the three CPU teams had bid exactly 1 point for Ruskin. I was, and am, confused. If it’s a bug it’s a terrible one. But I can see how it might not be a bug. It could be a clever simulation of what might really happen—knowing that I’m a club in trouble, the other clubs take advantage by slyly offering to lighten my wages blll with nominal transfer fees. Releasing Ruskin would mean paying compensation.

I rejected all the CPU offers, hoping for a ‘proper’ transfer fee from elsewhere. Amazingly, all the remaining weeks passed without the CPU bidding for any of my players.

So then came the last week, and I had to do the toughest thing. I had to release a load of players in order to get my salary budget down. I released all of the below:

Elmander
Sibon
John
Ben Arfa
Ruskin
Batlles

They all hurt in their own way. Sibon was the easiest to let go; Batlles the hardest. All of them cost me between 20 and 100 points in compensation. At the end of the process I had a bank balance of around 5250 points, and a salary bill of around 5150 points.

So I had avoided the dreaded GAME OVER. But at what cost? My current squad is pictured on the left. It doesn’t look too healthy, does it? You don’t have to know PES to know that playing a busy, competitive football season with a bare-bones squad like that is going to be tough. Especially when you’re not really that good at the game to begin with.

I’ve spent nearly six months on this blog assuring the possibly-sceptical reader that I am an average player of PES. The ludicrous next-gen PES2008 seemed to give the lie to that statement. Now the solid, faithful last-gen version is proving its truth.

On the right, for what it’s worth, is my new First XI.

Park Jyun Hi comes in to replace the departed Elmander. I’ll keep Komol on the bench for now, but his time is coming. I’m toying with the idea of moving Podolski to the centre and slotting in Komol out there on the left, but I’ll see how the season goes first. Heck, I’ve got so few players that they’ll all play an equal number of games anyway, and they’ll all be permanently knackered to boot.

I’ve played a Master League season with a preposterously small squad before. The last time I remember this happening to me was in PES4. The difference then was that I was already good at the game and was able to work my squad back towards rude health within half a season. I’m not giving up on this career before the season has even begun—if anything this makes life more interesting. But I’ll have to get good at last-gen PES2008, fast.