PES Chronicles

Singers FC 3-0 Napoli 0

I wrote the word ‘bootiful’ under this result in my notebook. For those not in the know, ‘bootiful’ is a rustic mispronunciation of the word ‘beautiful’, as popularised by the Norfolk farmer and businessman Bernard Matthews in a series of television advertisements over the past 20 or more years. In recent times bootiful has come to be used informally and/or ironically, when the speaker wants to be playful. I really don’t get out much.

Blackburn 1-2 Singers FC

Always a pleasure to beat one of the trickiest teams in the game.

Singers FC 1-2 Celtic

I’ve mentioned before that I find Celtic either ridiculously easy to beat or impossibly hard to beat in next-gen PES2008, with no middle ground. This was the hard Celtic, with Vennegoor of Hesselink (surely the greatest-ever name of anyone, ever) playing like a rampant beast throughout. He scored both Celtic goals, with me getting a late consolation.

Feyenoord 0-3 Singers FC

A return to form with a thrashing of Division 2′s current whipping boys.

Three wins out of four—and a stack of goals scored—have lifted me up to 2nd in the table and put some clear blue water between me and the chasing pack. After 30 games I’ve almost secured promotion—although my focus must not waver. The Division 2 Championship will look after itself.

Somewhere in amongst all these games, Andy Cole scored his first goal for my team. A very nice goal it was too, with some careful build-up play:

He’s still only 17 and has several seasons to go before he’s the finished article. Having said that, in my last ML career I only had him until the age of 19 and he was one of my best strikers even then. If he gets too good in this career I’ll have to change my House Rules and get rid of him. The same goes for any player, including the likes of Camacho and Mathieu. I’m getting very worried by Melengue, my left winger. He shows worrying signs of being a bit of a wonder-dribbler. He might have to be disposed of first of all. But I’ll cross these bridges if and when I get to them.

Singers FC are top of Division 2 at the halfway stage of the season. Here in this mid-season negotiation period I don’t need to get a load of new players. But I want to get some new players. It is very strange…

Is there a PES Master League player who is not conditioned to buy as many great players as he can in every negotiation period? It’s just the way you get after the difficult first season(s). Often it’s best to restrain yourself and simply make do with what you’ve got.

There are a couple of drawbacks to bringing in new players in PES Master League. The game models Teamwork, which is based on how effectively your individual players play together. New players will not fit in well to your team for a couple of games, or sometimes even longer. Passes will go astray and shots will go wide. (So how does that differ from normal? I hear somebody ask, waggishly.)

My squad has shown me that it’s more than capable of getting me what I want from this season—promotion—and perhaps even the Division 2 title as well. I don’t need to bring anyone else in.

Still, a few more players won’t hurt. But only a few. And they’ve got to be the right players. Players I need. Players who can fill a specific role in my squad.

I’ve had Morfeo in my squad ever since the first mid-season negotiations. He’s been good for me—he was great in his first season or so—but it’s time to move him on. He’s 36 and decidedly average now. He always was average, of course, it’s just that now he’s among much better players and it really shows.

I traded Morfeo for a player called Rasnic (AMF/SMF, both sides, 26 years old).

I won’t say too much now but Rasnic looks as if he could be a star.

He lacks pace, and he lacks any real special ability traits (such as Middle Shooting) that could make up for the lack of speed, but his other stats are all on the high side. Maybe he’ll be one of those players like Marcos from my last career who just comes from nowhere and turns out to be great and you have no idea why.

I also had a look through the Youth list to see who had popped up. Somebody worthwhile always pops up in the mid-season. That’s when the players who have retired at the end of the previous season reappear as 17-year-old Regens.

This time, I saw Stam and couldn’t resist him. (And isn’t that a great likeness of Stam, pictured right? The man looks like a Bond villain, no question.)

I also picked up Andy Cole—a player I had in my last ML career, and one of the few I’m allowed to have again this time around.

And that was it. Just three players coming in, with one going out as ballast in the deal for Rasnic. But I’m still left with 27 players in the squad. One of my key House Rules in this Master League career is that my squad can be no larger than 25 players. I had to decide on two players to release. (I did put some players up for sale, but that was a forlorn hope…)

One of the players released could be a Default player. Another key House Rule is that I must keep at least 5 of the original Default squad players at all times. I had 6 left: Valeny, Macco, El Moubarki, Libermann, Gutierrez, and Ordaz. One of them could go: I decided it was Valeny. The others have all got things going for them that Valeny hasn’t.

Which left me needing to ditch one other player from the remainder of my squad. It was tough, but I settled on Cassano. He’s been average for me out there on the right, and now that I’ve got Andy Cole I’ll be developing him from the start. I have other strikers who can play when Cole doesn’t. I don’t need Cassano. So it was bye-bye…

…and the game tried to scare me about it. What does it mean, Cassano will be sorely missed? I think that the game is telling me that jettisoning Cassano could cause my team popularity to fall, but that thing’s just window dressing. The team/player popularity mechanic is so half-heartedly modelled in PES2008 that it might as well not be there at all. The only times I have ever sensed it having any effect on the game was during my first ML career when I couldn’t persuade any clubs or players to negotiate with me in the transfer market. Otherwise, nothing. Nada, zip.

———————–

Andy Cole slots into Cassano’s vacant right-sided CF position. Rasnic and Stam can stay on the bench for now. There are 18 games to go. I’m sure they’ll both see plenty of meaningful action before this important season is finished.

I got my copy of PES2008 back on Wednesday 24th October 2007. As of this morning, Saturday 24th November 2007, I have played PES2008 for a grand total of 90 hours and 57 minutes. Over 72 hours of that time – three entire days – has been spent in Master League alone.

That isn’t bad for a game that was blatantly published by Konami in an unfinished condition and represents one of the most cynical marketing decisions ever made by any games company in the entire history of gaming. In my opinion.

PlayStation3 owners are still waiting for a patch, which may resolve the many irritating glitches affecting offline play (framerate, I am looking at you) but which will probably ‘only’ be an attempt to fix the horrific lag that online players are so upset about.

I’m not much of an online PES gamer – I’m not much of an online gamer, full stop. But it’d be nice to be able to have my usual one or two games per month online. Some PES gamers like to play nothing but online matches. It is, after all, one of the features promised on the box.

Whether the patch does or does not resolve the offline framerate issues, the big question for me right now is: will PES2008 prove to have any longevity in the long term? Will it last me a whole year, as its predecessors did?

I am suddenly finding the game to be easy. Not very easy – I still have to work for the goals and the wins. But it’s a lot easier than I should be finding it, I think. Ever since my Team Ranking went up to ‘C’, I have noticed a proportionate increase in the time I have on the ball and the things I can do with that time on the ball.

Two matches in particular have come and gone without me having to break much in the way of a virtual sweat.

Everton at home. I won 3-0. I had 14 shots to Everton’s 2 shots. And I scored this free kick with Shaw:

Scoring that didn’t feel very satisfying. No top-flight keeper, virtual or otherwise, should ever be beaten like that from a free kick.

Bolton were next. This one was away from home. The game ended 5-2 to me. I was 5-0 up at 70 minutes. Bolton’s two goals were late efforts that were down to a drop in my concentration. Soft goals, in other words.

Four of my goals in the Bolton match were memorable for different reasons. Here they are, in order of scoring – Schwarz (corner from Marcos); Andy Cole (from another Marcos corner); Reyes (scoring possibly my favourite goal on PES2008 so far; with zero backlift, he floats it over the keeper into the opposite corner; oh, and that’s Marcos again, setting it up); and finally Andy Cole once more, continuing to show great form:

Marcos and Andy Cole are starting to get seriously good. Marcos is a proper little midfield general, and easily my player of the season so far. Andy Cole seems to have a vicious right foot shot that finds the net whenever he gets a chance.

I’m top of the league, albeit by goal difference. While it feels good after all those seasons of struggle, I can’t quite shake off an uneasy feeling. This isn’t how Master Leagues are supposed to be. By the standard of years gone by, Coventry City should still be a mid-table team at best.

Defensively, I’m tempted to say that I’ve cracked it. I can stop all but a few CPU attacks. I don’t think I’m meant to stop the ones that I can’t stop.

Something I read a few weeks ago in a thread over on PESfan has stayed with me. The poster, whoever it was, said something like: Once you’ve worked out how to defend you’ll find you win nearly every game easily. You’ll shoot to the top of the league and stay there.

I hope not. This league table might turn out to be ridiculously premature. I have, after all, only played 11 games this season. We’ll see.

After the exhilaration of avoiding relegation in 2010, I had gone ahead and set up my 2011 pre-season friendlies before realising that it might be better to play, you know, someone rubbish in order to bump my ranking up a bit. I’d chosen to play the North American Stars in the fourth week of negotiations, and the South American Stars in the seventh week. Gulp.

As things turned out my ranking went from ‘D’ to ‘C’ anyway - I think I received a bonus after the end of the previous season. But still. It would have been nice to play a few teams who I wouldn’t have to struggle to beat (in theory).

I waited until the end of the pre-season period before settling on the new First XI. Hopefully I’d be able to test out all the new signings at some point during the two friendlies.

Not Andy Cole, though. He had a grey form arrow for both games. I never try to adjust grey arrows using the Regulate Condition feature – as noted by Ziggy Bashmore, you’re only ever going to move a player’s form arrow up by one level. There’s no point turning a grey arrow into a blue arrow.

A brief word about Andy Cole before we move on – just look at those stats! Most are only just above-average for a 20-year-old striker. But look at Body Balance and Response. His development curve shows he has a ways to go yet…

The other new signings were all fit and in form. In the first friendly against a selection of North American stars, I managed to play nearly all of them.

I put Delgado on the right of midfield, O’Shea in the centre of defence, Braafheid on the left, and Lekstrom went in goal. I kept Marcos on the bench, planning to bring him on for the second half. Too many new signings in a team makes for a lot of misplaced passes and general confusion – PES has always represented teamwork most excellently, in my opinion. Depending on their teamwork stat, your new players have to play for several games – with each other, as well as with your existing players – before they settle down.

I kicked off, passed the ball wide to Shaw, went on a little run, and scored:

A great start, and it seemed it was only going to get better. I knocked the ball around at the back like a pro, linking up with midfield, finding the strikers. I hit the bar twice in the same attack. I had several shots that flew just wide. O’Shea and Braafheid at the back were excellent. I noticed how useful Braafheid was down the wings. He seemed to have that extra yard of pace missing from Klavan and Van Steensel.

At half time I brought on Marcos for Shaw. Midway through the half, Felipe received the ball in his CB position, and I knocked the ball sideways to O’Shea – but for some reason O’Shea ‘tickled’ the ball rather than trapping it… A CPU player nipped in, took the loose ball, and scored past Lekstrom (who was excellent throughout the game, and blameless here).

This incident doesn’t mean that O’Shea is a poor player. I think it was the game representing a misunderstanding between new team-mates. O’Shea won’t be a First XI choice for me, but I saw enough of him in the pre-season games to know he’ll be a good CB to have up my sleeve when necessary.

The game ended 1-1 – a fair result in some ways, but in so many other ways an unfair result. I had 16 or so shots to the CPU’s 2 shots. I had 61% of possession. But hey, that’s PES for you. Frequently, results are not fair reflections of matches. There’s nothing unique to this year’s instalment on that front. We just accept it (grumpily, but we accept it) and move on.

The next pre-season friendly against the South American stars was absolutely torrid for me. I was hammered 2-0. I call it a hammering because once again the result did not reflect the match. The South American Stars had about 55% of possession, 11 shots to my 5 shots – and, well, they ran the proverbial rings around me at times. Ronaldo and Adriano were colossal up front for them. I was lucky to keep the score down low. Lekstrom pulled off some amazing saves. O’Shea, playing again, was strong. Marcos played the whole game and was anonymous. That was only minus-point – other than the match itself, of course.

Right on the cusp of starting season 2011 proper, I had to put together my First XI. This selection isn’t necessarily the team I would put out in every game. From match to match, the usual fitness and form considerations will always supersede the First XI. But it is a template, a statement of intent if you will.

In many ways the toughest decision was who to play as my regular goalkeeper. Friedel has been a loyal servant to the club, but both his youth and the last few seasons’ goals-against tallies count against him. The development chart shows that Friedel’s peak is still several seasons ahead of him. Deputising for Lekstrom at this stage won’t do him any harm at all. As for Kim U Don’t… I still have not forgiven him for that goal.

Guimaraes goes from strength to strength as an all-round right-back. I’m starting to find that I can sprint past anyone with him down the wing. He’s become a tough SB to get past as well. Mattsson and Felipe in the centre are a formidable duo. Mattsson – one of my first-season signings – has blossomed into a true presence as a CB.

I’m planning to lock up the midfield with Marcos, Muntari, and Delgado. Djiba will play when Delgado can’t. When Marcos is out, then I’ll play Shaw. Gone are the days of routinely playing two light-as-air show ponies in those AMF slots.

Also gone are the days of routinely playing youngsters up front. I was strongly tempted to go with Andy Cole as a right-sided CF, but after playing most of last season with Chiesa, another youngster, in that position, I’ve learned my lesson. In the end I gave the place to Shimizu. His pace and dribbling should get him plenty of goals (and assists) in the games to come.

And so we start all over again.