I had 30 players in my squad going into pre-season negotiations. Before doing anything else I had to get rid of 5 players. My House Rules dictate that my squad cannot be larger than 25 players.

The easiest and least expensive way to do this was simply not to renew some contracts. Around 10 of my Default players were up for renewal. It was against every instinct of my ML life. I have always renewed every player contract, pending future trade-in/transfer activity.

I allowed these players to vanish into the void:

Iouga
Ximelez
Fouque
Hamsun
Dodo

At a stroke my squad was down to 25 players.

I still had to make room for new players who would be coming straight to me from the Unbelonging list or the Youth list. So I also failed to renew these players’ contracts:

Stremer
Dodo
Ceciu

Ouch. I don’t rate any of the Default players, not even the best of them, but it still hurt. It just seemed so wasteful.

I also received an offer of 3000-odd points for Castolo. I decided to sell him. I haven’t rated Castolo for the past three instalments of PES. He’s had his purple patches for me this time around. But 3000-odd points was a fair price for a decidedly below-average player.

All of which meant that, along with all the PES points that Elcherino raked in for me last season, I was rich indeed. I had something like 21,000 points in the bank. My salary bill would be about 10,000 points.

I could afford to go a bit wild on the transfer market. Yes, it did occur to me that I was taking advantage of an imbalance in the game. Elcherino, as a monstrously overpowered Classic Player, was responsible for most of my excess bank balance. He scored 40+ goals for me last season, single-handedly winning most of the games he played in. Surely, after ditching Elcherino, I should also ditch - somehow - the riches he had brought? I gave it long and careful thought…

Nah, I thought. Let’s go shopping.

KMOLO (CF, 25)
LAGUTZ (CF, 26)
AKINFEEV (GK, 21)
GATTI (DMF, 25)
BALE (SB, 18)
MATUZALEM (CMF, 27)
MORFEO (SS, 27)
RECOBA (SS, 31)

These players came from a mixture of the Unbelonging list, the Youth (Rookie) list, and trade-ins with other clubs. I didn’t make a note of each one as I went along. I also had to release a couple more players to keep the total squad size at a nice round 25.

Getting Recoba was a surprise. He isn’t a top-drawer player, but he’s still a good player to have. In my last ML I couldn’t tempt any established players to Coventry City for at least a couple of seasons. Perhaps my strong second half of the season last year helped (although my team ranking is still only D).

Recoba is hardly the transfer scoop of all time. He’s one of the slowest forwards in the game. If he’s anything like his PES5 forebear, he’ll hardly ever be fit - and he won’t last more than 60 minutes even when he is fit.

As for Elcherino, I traded him in for Matuzalem. Cheekily, Matuzalem’s club refused to accept my initial bid of Elcherino alone. I’d figured that Elcherino alone was worth four times what their guy was worth. But no, they wouldn’t have it. I had to bump a second offer up to Elcherino+1000 points before I got Matuzalem. I hope he’s worth it.

—————–

There was one more piece of business to do in the pre-season. I hated the kits I chose for Singers FC’s first season - the dayglo-red home kit, and the fluorescent yellow away kit. What was I thinking back then? I think I wanted to make a clean break from the Coventry City career with an all-new team and all-new kits, but I just never got used to the new ones. These were those new kits:

Ugh. I hated playing with them. I made sure to go into the Edit Team option during this close season and change the kits to something more appealing:

Now that’s more like it.

After all this activity, the next thing to do is to choose a First XI and then actually play some games.

The story so far: after becoming extremely disenchanted with this year’s PES offering (on the PlayStation3, c’est naturellement), and trying and failing to rekindle the spark with PES5, I have spent the past several days searching for some way to play one or more other football games for the rest of the year.

Next-gen FIFA08 has been the leading candidate. I’ll be posting some time next week about the culmination of my FIFA08 Quadruple attempt with Coventry City in the English Premier League. There’s PES2008 business to deal with first. It’s very early days, but the signs are looking good for both games. At the moment it’s my plan to alternate between the two for the rest of the football game year. I’m looking at a two-state solution, people.

When I abandoned my second PES2008 Master League career and stormed off in a huff, I had just finished the first season with my team, Singers FC. The negotiation period was ahead of me.

I resumed that career today exactly where I had left off.

First on the list of priorities: get rid of Elcherino. He was sensational for me in the latter half of the first season. A bit too sensational. He scored at least a hat trick - at least a hat trick! - in almost every game he played. He represented everything that is wrong about the gameplay of next-gen PES2008 (an utterly different game from the PS2 version).

Most of Elcherino’s goals were akin to the sort you could score on previous PES games on the lowest difficulty level. It just wasn’t PES. I’m sure the kids love this aspect of PES2008. 7-2 scorelines are delightful if you just want to fill up some time between sessions of Halo3. Sorry, kids.

Elcherino is a classic player in PES2008. In years past I packed my ML teams with the likes of Michel Platini, George Best, Eric Cantona, Van Basten, Pele, Maradona, Zico, Gordon Banks… the list goes on. PES is its own world, and I’ve always been happy to use the old players alongside the current ones. It was never the case before (for me, an average player) that the Classics were absurdly overpowered, as they are in this year’s game.

Oh well. No more classic players in PES2008. I just have to get on with it. Curse you Seabass!

I’ll get rid of Elcherino as soon as I start negotiations proper - I should be able to trade him in for someone pretty good. An AMF with Middle Shooting is on the shopping list.

Before getting to negotiations, I have to finalise my House Rules. These are the special rules that I need to put in place to stop myself running away with the Master League after a certain tipping point is passed. In theory.

Here are the House Rules:

1. Squad size of no more than 25 players.

2. I’m not allowed to have any of the players I had in my last ML career. With just three exceptions: Maldini, Beerens, and Andy Cole. For various reasons I don’t think I saw the best of them. Maldini in particular was only with me for half a season as a Youth player. If any of the three become overpowered, my other House Rules would make me have to get rid of them.

3. At least 5 of the original Default squad must remain in the squad at all times.

4. When original Default squad members retire, they must be replaced from the pool of old-style Default players on the transfer market (Barota and Vornander et al) .

5. At least one original Default squad member must start every match and play at least a full half.

6. No Elcherino-style players are allowed in the squad. Primarily this means: no classic players. But it also means that I am not allowed to buy any players from the non-classic pool who already are, or might turn into, Elcherino-style wonder dribblers. Additionally, should any of my existing players show signs of developing into such a player, I am not allowed to play with that player, and I have to sell, trade, or release him at the first opportunity.

Only 6 House Rules for now - but in combination, they add up to something quite challenging, I think.

I considered including a ’skill cap’, i.e. preventing myself from using any player whose Overall rating was above 90, or even 85. But that may be premature.

It’s perfectly possible for a player to have high stats in many areas without being overpowered on the dribbling front.

A skill cap would also remove lots of the immersion of Master League for me: taking a young player from nothing and turning him into a legend. I’ll play this one by ear. If it becomes a problem, I’ll introduce a skill cap and have done with it.

I’ve played another five matches here in my first season in Master League on PES2008 on the PS3. I’m playing on Top Player difficulty. The Master League difficulty level is set to Very Hard. I’m also playing in a custom ‘Superleague’ made up of all the top club teams in the game (and Aston Villa).

I started the season pretty well. I actually won a game, which I wasn’t expecting to do. I only lost two games, and they were pretty close. Huh, I was thinking, PES2008? I’ll be back on PES5 before 2008 is even here…

Reality has set in. 5 hard defeats in a row. My players’ stamina levels from game to game have become so bad that they can barely walk with the ball, never mind run with it. Sprinting? The default players have never sprinted. Don’t make me laugh. But they at least used to waddle a bit faster than usual. Those days are gone. Sniff.

I lost the 5 games very badly. Stupid goals conceded far too easily, even taking into account the Default players’ skill-lessness. Any slender hopes I once had of maybe, possibly, challenging for promotion in my first season are firmly dashed. Even if I have a superb Negotiation Period (and I won’t), it won’t be enough to lift me back up the table.

The likes of Napoli, Sampdoria, and Sevilla are seriously good - far too good for Division 2. They’re all up there near the top, challenging for promotion, already a long way away from me.

Celtic dumped me out of the cup, 6-2 on aggregate. I was never in contention after the first leg at my ground ended 0-3. I briefly had some hope when I went 1-0 up in the second leg at their place, but that hope was quickly crushed as Celtic stormed back to go in at half-time 3-1. I grabbed a consolation goal towards the end.

It’s tempting to switch the match times to 5 minutes in order to speed up my progress through this tedious phase of my new Master League, but I can’t do that. There are two crimes I have never committed during several years of PES gaming. I have never reloaded a save in order to get a different result in any match. (Honestly.) And I have never played Master League games on anything other than 10-minute match lengths. (Some pre-season friendlies excepted.)

For me it’s now all about getting to the mid-season Negotiations, bringing in a couple of good players, and then having as good a second part of the season as possible. If I can position myself to have a great pre-season Negotiations after this one, I should - should - be able to challenge for promotion next season. Ah, but by then my House Rules will be in full swing…

The first big House Rule will start to affect me in this very season. During the mid-season Negotiations I plan to trim my squad to 28 players and keep it that way. At least until next season, when - depending on results, and how the game ‘feels’ - I might even bring the squad down to 25 players. The ultimately challenging squad size would be 20 players. That’s one for the far future, I think.

The House Rules will come into play as and when they are appropriate. There’s no point bringing them in now. The Default squad players are almost a House Rule of their very own.