Yesterday I forgot to post one of the goals I scored in my last two games before the mid-season negotiations. The goal is worth posting now for a couple of reasons:

First and foremost, it was the winning goal in the 2-1 win over Feyenoord, which was my first win after a run of nine consecutive defeats.

Second, it’s a pretty nice goal - rarely for the Default team, it’s a long shot from outside the box that curls into the bottom corner of the net past the CPU keeper’s reach.

Third, it was almost the final kick of a ball in my team from Van den Berg, one of the better Default players. Now that I’m at the mid-season point, my House Rules have kicked in, and Van den Berg has left my team forever.

I have mixed feelings about getting to this stage, this time around. As I hinted yesterday, I have started to feel that PES2008 - or PES2008 Master League, I should say (99.99% of my PES year is spent on ML) - is simply a waste of my time. The arcadey gameplay of PES2008 makes the ML feel lightweight and unimportant. It lacks almost everything that made Master League “arguably the greatest game mode ever created, period”.

(I’m paraphrasing from memory from an article I read in a games magazine back in 2002 or so, when I was trying to pluck up the courage to spend literally every penny of my meagre savings on a PS2. Eventually I took the plunge and got myself the console+one game - PES2. It was the best £180 I ever spent. )

Still, I’m here now, so let’s see what kind of business I can get done.

My first House Rule has come into play: I am not allowed to have any players that I had in my last career. There are only two exceptions: Beerens and Maldini. I had them for such a short time that I want to see more of them. It’ll be a good few seasons before I’m in a position to get them, though.

My second House Rule: I will maintain a squad of no more than 28 players. This seems reasonable to me because no matter how well I do in this negotiation, I’ll still have mainly default players. In time I want to go down to 25 players or even to 20 players. We’ll see.

——————-

I released Stremer and Huylens and Dodo and Lieberman. I did put them up for transfer first but no one came in for them. In the final week of negotiations, I simply let them go.

I sold Ettori - another one of the better Default players. I was sorry to see him go, as I don’t think I kept him for very long last time either, but I have to be ruthless if I want this new Superleague ML with House Rules to work. Away he went.

I traded Van den Berg for a 26-year-old striker called Caracciolo. Who he? I have no idea, but he was on the ‘Openness to Negotiation’ list. Big and strong, albeit with no pace and very little shooting ability- but he’ll do. He’s better than any of the Default strikers.

Also on the Openness to Negotiation list was one Halil Altintop, a highly-spoken-of striker aged 24. I traded El Moubarki for him. At the moment, Altintop seems to be as mediocre as Caracciolo, but I suspect that things will change. His development curve is very steep.

I also went shopping on the Youth Player list. I got three 17-year-olds: Jackson (CB), Postma (SB), and Camacho (AMF).

Camacho also plays at DMF, and he has the all-important Middle Shooting ability. I keep seeing his name in people’s lists of good buys in the Master League, so I have high hopes.

As for Jackson, I had him in my PES6 ML team. He was reliably solid, if not quite superstar material.

Postma will easily supplant the shambling Griersen at right-back. In fact, putting all of my Youth players straight into the team is a no-brainer. I’m rock-bottom of the division. What is there to lose? Nothing.

I got one other player. This one was a bit special. I snatched him from the Unbelonging list, paying several thousand points that I could ill afford and potentially risking a Game Over at the end of the season. I think I’ll be all right, though…

The player is Elcherino - a 23-year-old CF based upon the legendary Eusebio. I tried to get him a few times during my first PES2008 ML career but failed every time. I was very surprised to get him (and most of the others) so quickly this time around - especially with the ML difficulty set to Very Hard.

(I last had Elcherino in my ultimate team of galacticos back in PES5. He can be seen knocking in a couple of corkers in the opening stages of my first PES5 compilation movie. In that team he was overshadowed by Bergkamp (as the movie demonstrates). What I loved about PES5 was that even though I had a massive squad packed with superstars, I had to work hard every season to be consistently successful. It took me 15 seasons to win a Treble, and I only won two or three more Trebles in the 25 or so seasons after that. I was playing PES5 until the day before PES6 came out. No, it won’t be long before I’m back there…)

Here’s my all-new First XI. It looks pretty good, I have to say:

Neither Elcherino nor Altintop are natural wide men up front, but I want them to play there nevertheless. For now. It’ll be a rare game when all three play together anyway, so they can deputise for each other.

Immediately after the negotiation period, I played my first game with my new players. It was very interesting. So interesting, in fact, that it deserves a special post all of its own. That’ll be for tomorrow.

I didn’t feel like playing PES today. Let me correct that: I didn’t feel like playing PES2008 today. I almost didn’t play it. I had my copy of PES5 in my hands and was about to uncork it (a very fine vintage), when I remembered that I’m only two games short of the mid-season Negotiation Period in my PES2008 Master League career. I might as well get them out of the way.

It never used to be like this. It used to be the case that my PES disc lived in my console for months at a time and saw daily action without me giving it a second thought. PES2008 has a lot to answer for.

To be brutally honest, I think I have almost given up on PES2008. I don’t play it with any kind of enjoyment or involvement. There’s little or none of the sheer joy that’s sustained my Master League play for almost a decade now.

There are lots of reasons for this. I’ve spoken of them ad nauseum over the past few months. The primary reason is the game’s ease after you get some good players. I’m struggling with the default squad, but I know that these struggles are almost worthless. All I have to do is make it to the negotiation period, and then everything will be different. There’s no sense that I’ll have to start playing well or anything.

—————–

In my last two games before the mid-season period, I played Feyenoord and Parma, two teams who presented my Default players with a formidable challenge.

I came into these games on a run of nine consecutive defeats.

Something was different today. Perhaps it was the pervasive bank holiday ambience that is still very much in the air. I was relaxed, and instead of playing with the defaulters as if they are the world-beaters that I will soon (too soon) be playing with, I played very much to their strengths and taking account of their weaknesses.

The first and most important thing with the default players is not to concede goals. You have to defend doggedly, with discipline. This is advice I have singularly failed to heed for most of this season so far. (Largely because I’m just not bothered.)

It is possible to defend well with the likes of Stein, Ceciu, Baumann et al. It’s tough and it’s hair-raising at times, but it is possible. You have to maintain a low attack/defence posture, and ensure that you don’t drag your defenders out of position when chasing a pacy winger or tracking a midfielder running through the centre.

The second most important thing is to keep possession as much as possible. This is easier than it sounds, even with the default stiffs. Post-match possession stats of 65% or so in your favour are easily achievable. One-touch and two-touch passing is the key. Never try to run with the ball, unless there are no CPU players within 10 yards. Lay the ball off as soon as a CPU player comes within 5 yards. You need to lay it off ‘early’ because of the way the default players handle. There can be an appreciable delay between pressing the pass button and the action being carried out; there can also be a loss of passing accuracy with a CPU player very close by.

Using these techniques, and being patient, and being content with 0-0 scorelines if that’s what I had to do, I had two very good games against Feyenoord and Parma. I beat Feyenoord 2-1, and drew 1-1 with Parma. I’ve stopped the rot, and now I’m about to enter the mid-season negotiation period. I decided to save it for tomorrow.

Happy bleedin’ Christmas. There’s nothing quite like a bit of PES on Christmas morning. Every year I have at least a couple of games before being dragged away to the delights of those tasty little sausages wrapped in bacon, bottomless glasses of fizzy red wine, and paper hats that don’t fit on my big head. This morning, as slate-grey clouds scudded overhead and the neighbours’ kids raced up and down the road on their new bikes, I sat down in my sad little room and powered up the PS3.

There’s not much Christmas spirit in evidence in my Master League at the moment. I played four more matches - taking me tantalisingly close to the mid-season negotiations (aka the Promised Land). I took another four gruesome beatings, dished out to me by a ruthless CPU. I have now lost nine games in a row.

This is considerably worse than how I remember it going the last time around. Bumping up the ML difficulty level from Normal to Very Hard has done exactly what it said on the tin.

Atalanta, Marseille, Benfica, Feyenoord: all four teams came, saw, and conquered. I spent this morning alternately groaning and crying out in frustration as none of my passing moves worked and very few of my shots found the target. I scored one goal in the four matches. Just one: a header from a corner. Not even a proper goal…

The only positive spin I can put on this morning’s results is that I kept the goals-against tally down to a reasonable level. Only one team, Benfica (a very strong outfit), scored more than two goals against me. Admittedly they did score five without reply, so I can’t be too overjoyed at ‘only’ losing 0-1, 0-2, and 1-2 in the other fixtures.

I have two more games to play before I get to the mid-season Negotiations. There was no time to get there this morning. It’s bloody Christmas, after all. There are certain things that one simply has to do at Christmas, whether or not you’d rather be playing PES. If I don’t get to see The Guns of Navarone on TV for the umpteenth time, I won’t be happy.