It’s been a long old journey from then to now. Not as long as my journeys in previous PES years. (PES2008 will always suffer in comparison to its previous selves.) But it’s been long enough.

I sleepwalked through what was left of the League: West Ham 0, Coventry City 5. Andy Cole got 4 goals in this game.

Manchester United finally lost one, meaning that a win in my next fixture would seal the Championship title.

That next fixture was against my forthcoming D1 Cup Final opponents, Aston Villa. (This often happens in PES. Especially in the early stages of a season. With two-legged cup ties, sometimes you can end up playing the same opponents three times in a row.)

I beat Aston Villa 5-3, and took the title. Here’s Captain Schwarz leading the celebrations:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVYYWDWLYI&rel=1]

It was the easiest League title I have ever won on any instalment of PES. Still, it was my first title in PES2008. This season was memorable for many good reasons. It would be churlish of me to grumble any more now (there’s plenty of time left until PES2009 for that.)

The only thing left to go for in the League was a goal difference of +100 or more. (Schwarz, with 29 goals, was already the runaway Golden Boot winner.)

I beat Galatasaray 5-2. Orellano got a hat trick, playing in the centre CF slot in place of Schwarz, who has been blue- or grey-arrowed for almost every game lately.

The final league game was against Bolton. I went into it with a goal difference of +99. Easy, right?

Well, once again I tried too hard. I found myself 0-1 down and with just 9 players by the middle of the second half. No problem. This is PES2008, after all. I scored two late goals with my 9 men and won 2-1, taking me to a goal difference of exactly +100 in the final table.

My final goals scored tally was 136. One hundred and thirty-six. In one season. Ridiculous.

Here’s a full list of my team’s goal-scoring/assists performance this season:

(The discrepancy of 4 goals is made up for by CPU own goals, and one or two goals that Bramble got before I traded him mid-season.)

As can be inferred from the list, I’ve been less than dutiful in reporting just how effective Shimizu and Andy Cole have been for me up front this season. Some of my Schwarz-centric posts might have suggested that Coventry City was a one-man team. Not so.

Andy Cole in particular deserves a special mention. He’s another player I don’t think I’ve seen the best of, despite his 15 goals this season. Along with Beerens, I’ll be allowing myself to get him again next time around. Schwarz and Shimizu definitely won’t be allowed.

Final position: 1st (103 pts)
Won:33 Drew:4 Lost:1
Goals scored:136 Goals conceded:36 Goal difference:+100
Yellow cards: 34 Red cards: 6

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The Division 1 Cup Final against Aston Villa was a peculiar game. Villa took the lead, I equalised. Villa equalised, I took the lead again. Then Villa took the lead. It was 3-2 to them going into half time. I was frustrated and more than a little tense. With the Treble apparently sitting on a plate begging to be eaten, I was in danger of throwing it away.

I shouldn’t have worried, though. I scored three goals in the second half and won the Cup 5-3 (the exact same score of my League title decider against Villa). The pick of the goals was this peach of a strike from Beerens:

I do love a goal that finds the postage stamp corner of the net. This one was achieved with a minimum of backlift, which always makes a player’s technique stats shine through.

I only got to play with Beerens for this one season. He’s still only 24. In my next Master League I’m banning myself from having all but a few players that I’ve had in this career. Beerens will be one of the exceptions.

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After all of the fireworks in the League and D1 Cup, the ECC Final against Barcelona was relatively anti-climactic. I was nervous going into the game, and once again I conceded an early goal.

The amount of early goals conceded in big games is extremely dubious. It could be a result of being a little more uptight than usual, and playing in a withdrawn, over-careful manner; or it could just be PES’s pesky scripting; or it could be a mixture of the two. Or it could be something else. Coincidence, maybe. There sure are a lot of coincidences in PES2008…

I chose to man-mark Ronaldinho with Bradley in this game (I never usually bother with man-marking), and the buck-toothed wonderboy was pretty anonymous throughout, despite me rarely seeing Bradley within so much as 5 yards of him, all game.

I held firm against Barcelona’s persistent pressure. I got my equaliser with Bradley scuffing a shot over the line during a goal-mouth scramble.

I got the winner with Reyes toward the end. 2-1 to me. And that was that.

The Treble was in the bag. I had fought a war on three fronts throughout a long, long season, and been victorious on all of them.

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It was difficult to progress in the Cups on one or two occasions. The absence of Italian clubs in Europe takes the gloss off winning the ECC. The League took its time to ripen and fall into my lap, thanks to Man Yoo’s peculiar reluctance to lose any of their games.

But it was all just too easy, in the final analysis.

The reasons why it was too easy have been gone over again and again (and again) here and on dozens of other PES-focused sites. Goalkeepers have emerged as the #1 reason why there are so many goals in next-gen PES2008. The keepers in the game are broken.

There is also the matter of player pace. In years gone by, your players’ pace and acceleration stats meant next to nothing. The slowest CPU team defender could catch the quickest human team player. We complained and griped and grumbled about it for so long that they finally caved in. The result? Every player is a potential Maradona. This is a tough one to criticise Seabass & co. for. What he/they should have done was to find a way to make CPU defensive AI a lot better.

But this is not the place for a PES2008 post-mortem. Not now.

There’s life in the old dog yet. I’ll say it again: the core PES gameplay of next-gen PES2008 is as good as it’s ever been. (In my opinion. Other opinions differ.)

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Here’s the download link to my final saved game file: PS3.zip

WARNING! Transferring this game save to your PS3 will overwrite any ML save of your own that’s called Master League 03. Proceed with caution.

Any PS3-owner with a USB stick who’s curious to see my players and check out my season-by-season record is welcome to do so. Anyone who might want to pick up where I left off and play on is also welcome to do so.

The save file will place you in week 1 of negotiations at the end of season 2012, with the squad that won the Treble.

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NEXT on peschronicles: next-gen FIFA08 week.

I said I was going to do it. And now I’m going to go ahead and do it.

I could do with a break from PES2008 (familiarity breeds you-know-what). I have a lot of unfinished business to deal with in FIFA08.

PES vs. FIFA is an ongoing (and largely dull) debate.

Until this year (or arguably last year, with FIFA07) PES vs. FIFA was a no-brainer. PES was the thougtful, mature, simulation-oriented football game for mature gamers of all ages. FIFA was the arcadey, pass-pass-shoot game for kids of all ages. There was little or no argument to be had. PES all the way.

Well. In retrospect, PES-lovers can see that our unshakeable confidence in the franchise was unrealistic. Next-gen FIFA08 is the first serious challenger to PES ever.

Over the next seven days I’ll be talking about my progress with FIFA08. I’ll discuss its gameplay specifically in relation to the PES series and to PES2008 in particular. I’ll be treating FIFA08 as a game in its own right (of course), but it’s only natural that much of my attention will be through PES-tinted spectacles.

—————-

After that it’ll be back to Master League on PES2008. In a Superleague. Starting all over again with the Default players. I can’t wait.

After shaking off the glee of winning the Division 1 Cup in style, it was back to the main business: surviving the drop back down to Division 2.

The feeling going into the last three games was uncomfortably like the feeling I used to have in April and May of every year when the real Coventry City were in the old English Division 1/Premier League. Every year we flirted with disaster, but somehow miraculously survived. It was an annual game of Russian Roulette that we eventually lost.

Was history about to reproduce itself in my PES2008 Master League? If so, how would I handle it? Could I even accept it? As this is a video game, I wouldn’t have to accept it.

I’ll make a confession here. If I got relegated, I could always reload an earlier save and play the game(s) again. I gave serious thought to how I would feel about that. There’d be nothing to stop me. I never play with the anti-cheat autosave function switched on - I usually don’t need to, as I never reload under any circumstances (system crashes and freezes excepted, of course; I’ve yet to have one on the PS3).

I’m the kind of gamer who thinks there’s no point in playing a game unless you can accept the outcome, whatever it is. Reloading in any game smacks to me of cheating - you’re just cheating yourself out of the whole experience. If gaming is to be more like life, then do-overs are not allowed. No one would ever know if I reloaded. But I would know, and that knowledge would be enough to spoil my entire ML career.

So I decided that I had to simply take the results, whatever happened. I took a deep breath and got down to business.

I don’t think I have ever been more focused on any match in PES than I was for the first of the three fixtures. It was against Bolton Wanderers. I was able to select most of the new improved First XI. Reyes was unfit, so I brought in Frutos and stuck him in the middle. Schwarz moved left. Bramble was also unfit for the game and was replaced by Mattsson, who has slowly matured into a really, really useful, and above all strong CB.

After kick-off, somehow I knew that I was going to be all right. PES is like that sometimes. Within a few seconds of the opening, you know from the way the CPU players are playing, and how your own players are playing, whether this game is likely to go your way or not. Call it PES paranoia, but that feeling most often steals over you when the game seems destined to go against you. When you get the opposite feeling, well, suddenly it’s like being Brazil.

Only ten minutes or so into the game, Schwarz and Frutos linked up:

A flood of relief. The way the league table was looking pre-game, I knew that winning this one could make me mathematically safe.

I played on, doing well just as in the Cup Final, snuffing out everything in the centre with Muntari and Felipe and Mattsson, and probing dangerously with my midfield and front threes. Djiba was immense. He really has been a revelation over the last couple of matches.

Just after half-time I scored another, making it 2-0 to me. Felipe got it from a corner. The game went on, with Bolton suddenly in God Mode. They didn’t get past me, but they were threatening to… My spider sense tingled. A CPU goal was in the wind. It’s the usual PES2008 scenario, unfortunately. The game just loves to set up an ‘exciting’ last ten minutes. The game’s programmers must think that last-minute equalisers and winners are the norm in football rather than the exception.

I needed a third goal to really kill off the game. Then I got it. I went on a mazy run with Djiba(!), but lost the ball in the penalty box as the keeper advanced. Chiesa, on as a substitute, picked up the loose ball. The keeper was off his line…

3-0 to me. How sweet it was. After the final whistle I hurried to check the league table.

I was almost safe. At the very bottom, Celtic and then Copenhagen were a long way behind - both teams were relegated a long time ago. Manchester City in 18th were on 33 points. I was on 38 points. I would have to lose both remaining games, and Man City would have to win theirs, to be relegated now. Not very likely, but you never knew.

Next up in the penultimate game of the season was Sunderland - my bogey team for the past four seasons. I’ve never beaten them or even had a good game against them. This time was no different. I went behind early on as Sunderland once again walked the ball through my defence. In trying my utmost to get back into the game, I went back to my bad old ways. I had Bramble and Traore sent off. The game finished 3-0 to Sunderland. I was furious - with myself, with Sunderland, with life.

But when I checked the table, I saw that Manchester City had lost. I was still 5 points clear of the dropzone. There was only one game left in the season. I was safe.

The final game of the season against Tottneham was anything but meaningless. Thanks to the Cup run I’ve seen my Team Ranking go from just-about-D to nearly-C… This affects what kinds of players you can bid for in negotiations. After the defeat to Sunderland it had slipped back a notch, but not too much. One more win, I thought…

I did win it. I won 2-0, and scored this goal with Djiba:

That was his first for the team. He’s the man of the moment all right.

My Team Ranking increased another notch, but is frustratingly still a hair’s-breadth short of the threshold leading to a ‘C’ rating. I’ve set up a couple of pre-season friendlies that will hopefully carry me over the line and make negotiations slightly easier.

So that was the end of the season. I finished in a reasonably healthy 14th position in the end. I survived to fight in Division 1 another day, but it was close for a long time there.

Season 2011 will be different, I think. Battling relegation has been intense and very Coventry City-like, but actually being relegated would have been no fun at all. And it could have happened.

They say (whoever they are) that you should never say ‘never again’. But I’ll say it anyway: never again.

Final Position: 14th (41 points)
Won: 10 Drew: 11 Lost: 17
Goals scored: 38 Goals conceded: 51 Goal difference: -13
Yellow Cards: 43 Red Cards: 31 (!)