I’ve taken the disappointment of being eliminated from Europe and the D1 Cup, rolled it up into a little ball, and tossed it into a very dark corner. There’s nothing else for it but to make the best I can of the rest of this season. I have to finish as high up the league as I am capable. That could—and I think should—be in the #1 spot. I should win the title this season.

I’ve got a great chance. I’ve got some great players—all the youngsters I bought a couple of seasons ago are now maturing and starting to put CPU teams to the sword, where they belong. Larsson. Giggs. Del Piero. Bradley. Maldini.

Not to mention the likes of Schwarz, Camacho, Fernandez. In goal, Lehmann is starting to turn in some fine performances—my Goals Against column has never looked healthier at this stage of the season. Looking through the squad, I’d say I haven’t got any real weaknesses—especially in midfield and up front, where only the very young and raw Kim Cyun Hi would be unable to carry a game on his own at the moment. All the rest are virtual one-man teams when the mood takes them.

I won all four games leading up to the mid-season negotiations. I dished out a beating and a half to Osasuna, an awkward little team who were threatening to keep me at bay until I scored a hat trick with Schwarz in the last half an hour and got a bonus fourth goal with Kim Cyun Hi in injury time. I beat Real Madrid 1-0. My new policy against the division’s Big Three (Madrid, Barca, Valencia) is to play ultra-conservatively, get my goal, and then shut up shop. It works. I beat a couple of other teams as well. I forget who they were, or by how many goals I beat them.

Time was that I obsessed over almost every little detail, faithfully pausing the game to note everything down in a little notebook. I still do note things down, but not so much. Perhaps it’s a telling fact that I was much more willing to pause the game and write notes when I was playing PES2008 on the PlayStation3. Now that I’m playing a PES that I actually enjoy and find to be consistently challenging, I’m much less willing to interrupt my play session and take timeouts to scribble notes.

Consequently, this blog has become Impressionistic, hit-and-run—perhaps even a little bit sketchy. Note-taking tends to get in the way of playing the game. It disrupts rhythm, upsets flow. It takes the gloss off magic moments, because at the back of my mind I think I’d better press Start to pause the game and make a note. Nowadays, I just carry on, trusting that I’ll either remember the details later—or, if I forget them, then they weren’t worth remembering.

So, those four wins took me up to top of the table. Going into the mid-season negotiations, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. Well, I’d rather be top of the league and still in the European Cup and the D1 Cup, but you know what I mean.

Well, that didn’t last long. The Treble is off. The story so far: after several seasons of struggle, this season—2014—was my first chance to go for all 3 big prizes: League, Cup, WEFA Championship (i.e. the European Cup). The only drawback was that I had to go through the preliminary WEFA qualifying tournament after only finishing in 5th place last season.

I’ve always disliked having to pre-qualify. It seems to swell a season to interminable lengths, making it feel about a third longer than usual. I don’t think I’ve ever gone on to win a WEFA Championship after being in the pre-qualifiers. And this season isn’t going to change that record.

I’ve been dumped from the main WEFA tournament after some pretty shocking performances against some fast, skilful, and hyper-aggressive opponents in Europe. My group opponents were Atletico Madrid, Palermo, and some outfit called Sochaux whom I’d never heard of until they showed up here. (Shame on me, probably. I bet they’re famous, wherever they’re from.)

Atletico pounded me in both fixtures. Sochaux beat me in one game and I managed to get a draw off them in the other. I beat Palermo comfortably in our first game, then in the second—the last fixture of the qualifying group—I needed to beat them by a couple of goals to stand an outside chance of stealing second place from Sochaux.

Alas, as ever in PES (you’ve got to love it), none of my 30,000 attempts on goal found the back of the net. I hit both posts. I hit the crossbar—twice. And of course Palermo scored with their one chance during their one attack. Sometimes, you just have to hold your hands up and acknowledge that some things were never meant to be. As it turned out, even if I had beaten Palermo 15-0 (as I could have done) it would’ve made no difference. Sochaux beat Atletico. I wouldn’t have overtaken them.

So I have to be content with third place in the qualifying group—which at least puts me into the WEFA Masters Cup. I hardly ever get to play for that trophy. I don’t think I’ve actually won it more than about three times in all my years on PES. By the time you get good enough to win it, you’re in the WEFA Championships anyway. So it really is a consolation prize for the one season when you’re neither bad nor good, but good enough to take part in the WEFA Masters. I hope all of that makes sense…

At least now I can concentrate on the league. I have to go full-tilt for my secondary goal of ‘only’ winning the league—at the very, very least, I want to finish in the top 2 and avoid the qualifying tournament next season.

After 11 league games I’m still in third spot, 7 points off first, and only 2 points off second. Schwarz has been immense - a monster of a player. No one can stop him when he’s fully fit and on form. Giggs is starting to come good. Kim Cyun Hi—my great hope for the future—is playing in some games and doing well, even getting the odd goal.

Things are looking good for the league. I’m hopeful in that direction. Confident, even. But I went and got myself knocked out of the D1 Cup immediately after the WEFA tournament disappontment. So the league’s all I’ve got now. Just the league, and nothing else. It’s a shame I’ve already used the post title ‘Now we can concentrate on the league‘, otherwise I’d be using it here, where it’s even more appropriate than it was there.

It’s the start of a very special season. 2014 will, I hope, see me going for the Treble (after first qualifying for the WEFA Championships via the preliminary tournament—a very tall order). If that doesn’t pan out, I hope to ‘only’ win the League, and then go full-bloodedly for the Treble next season. At the very, very worst, I’d like to finish in 2nd place, and thus avoid having to pre-qualify for WEFA next season. But I shouldn’t be thinking about settling for anything less than the Treble. So here goes.

I must not neglect the League in my pursuit of the Treble. It’d be typical of me, going by past PES years’ performances, to ‘do a Liverpool’ and enjoy success in Europe without even getting close to the most important component, the title.

I’ve had a good start in the League, winning 3 and losing 1 of my opening four games. I’m third in the table, just a point behind the current leaders. Playing PES year after year, virtual season after virtual season, the first few games tend to give you an inkling of how the rest of the season is going to go. Based on how these four games have gone, I think I can win the league, but it’ll be tough.

I’m still not as au fait with last-gen PES2008 as I could be. A lot of this is to do with constant swapping between the PSP and PS2 versions. The core gameplay is identical, but the control mechanism and the whole ‘feel’ is different enough for there to be an inevitable period of adjustment—usually about one match, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. In addition, the PSP version is afflicted with some unfortunate PES4-style slowdown when the screen becomes too packed (a rare enough occurrence for the whole game not to be spoiled).

This season’s difficulty has been ramped up by having to go through a full pre-tournament qualifying group stage for the WEFA Championships. From week 1 I’m playing two games every week, a league game, then a WEFA game, then a league game… It’s punishing. It’s always been punishing. It really tests the mettle of a Master League squad to its limits.

So far, results in Europe are mixed. I played Atletico Madrid in game 1, and was chuffed to take an early 1-0 lead, and then go on to completely dominate the whole first half. Schwarz was the goal-scorer. The only black mark was a yellow card for him when I over-enthusiastically tackled back whilst trying to retrieve the ball. And than I accidentally had Schwarz sent off. It happened because I was using Square to press for the ball, and Schwarz auto-slide-tackled an Atletico player, and got another yellow card. Ouch.

Atletico got their equaliser early in the second half and I had another player sent off. Again it was for two yellow cards; again it was vaguely accidental. I wasn’t scything players down for the fun of it. Atletico scored another two goals before the end of the game, winning it 3-1. A terrible start to my WEFA campaign.

Is the Treble attempt over before it’s properly begun? I managed to thump Palermo 3-0, but only drew 1-1 with Sochaux. The table shows the position halfway through the six games. I’m 3 points behind second place. I think I can still qualify for the full tournament, but I’ve been amazed at how fiercely competitive the CPU teams are in Europe. The CPU teams in last-gen PES2008 seem hyper-aggressive to me anyway, but in European games that aggro seems turned up to 11.

If I win two of the remaining three games—especially the one against Sochaux—I’ll qualify. I should be okay, but my confidence is wavering.