PES Chronicles

Winning the title last season triggered a cascade of cash, an avalanche of bounty, a tidal wave of credit, a hurricane of moolah, a tsunami of dosh. I could go on there, but I won’t. It’s safe to say that I’m rich now, richer than I’ve ever been so far in this Master League career. I got £15,000,000 for winning the league. I got another £10,000,000 or so from new and renewed sponsorship deals. I got a bonus couple of million from the fan club.

With all that money swilling around it might be expected that I’d bring in a ton of great new players for season 11 and my first Treble attempt. But no. Something confusing happened with Expected Earnings, again. After upgrading a few of my backroom staff, I slapped in a few bids for some 90 OVR-rated players—a CB and a DMF. The combined transfer fee would have been around £6,000,000. Expected Earnings duly took this bid into account when reckoning my final balance, giving me a figure of -£1,000,000 or so. This triggered those warnings you get from the game that you’re about to run into debt.

I was utterly confused. I’ve never made big transfer bids before. I was unsure about what was going on. I suppose I couldn’t believe I was as rich as I was. I lowered my team staff levels right back down to where they were, and waited until the end of the transfer window. My two bids for the players were refused. I was too worried to make new ones for other players. Wages and costs were paid… and it turned out that I was still about £7,000,000 in credit. Expected Earnings had caused me to mess up a transfer window yet again.

So I go into season 11 with exactly the same squad that won the title last season. This is a good thing in one way—there are no new players to dilute the team-work pool. But with Europe coming up, my squad feels pretty lightweight. I’ll line up a few top signings for the mid-season window, and hope my season is still alive at that stage.

My annual change of kits saw me decide to alter the horizontally striped home kit that I loved so much last season. I wish I hadn’t changed it now. I really did love it. I’ll be going back to them stripes next season. For this season I made the stripes wider and adopted black shorts. For the away kit I chose a red strip with white trimmings. I’ve just noticed that I picked different shades of red for the shirts and shorts. Ooops. Thankfully, in PES2010 you don’t have to wait until the end of a season to fix mistakes like that.

Season 11 got underway, and the short news is: I’m struggling. Badly. I’m playing terribly. I’ve had odd good games, but not enough to make my current league position—13th after 7 matches—anything but an embarrassment. We’re supposed to be the champions…

At least I haven’t fumbled the Treble just yet. I squeezed through the first round of the Cup, against Arsenal, thanks to a lucky away goal. But things are precarious in the second round. River Plate are my opponents and after the first leg at my ground I’m 1-2 down on aggregate. It’ll be tough at their place. I’ve got to score twice to have any chance at all.

None of this post-title-winning struggle is unprecedented for me. Thinking back, all the best Master Leagues—PES5’s, of course, in particular—has thrown me a curveball in the first season after big success. I can vividly recall a season on PES5 where I flirted with relegation immediately after a superb title-winning campaign. This iffy start to season 11 is a good sign that ML is back to its classic best.

The Champions League has started. I’ve played one match in the group stage, against Juventus. I was ridiculously proud to see my Coventry City team—my Coventry City team!—lining up beforehand, and the music, and the lights… The match itself was a minor disaster. I lost 1-3 at home.

Juventus steamrollered me. They were 0-2 up before half time. I was totally on the back foot, and couldn’t seem to do anything to stop the relentless waves of attacks. I got a lucky goal back after the break to give me some hope of recovery, but they scored a killer third goal soon after that.

And so I had lost my opening game. It’s a weird Champions League group: myself, Juventus, Manchester City, and Aberdeen. I hate seeing Man City there, not just because they’re a good team—and they will be tough—but because they’re from my own league.

Finally I have to show this very interesting goal scored by the AI. I rarely show goals by the AI, but this was something very special. When I looked closely at the replay I could hardly believe it. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this from the AI in a PES game:

Link:

Fresh from my Master League championship triumph, it’s hard to know which way to jump in this negotiations period. I’ve got about 40,000 spare points to play with. I could snap up two or three really high-quality players, if I wanted to. I’m talking Kaisers here. I’ve got the prestige now to attract them to my club. But do I want to go down that route?

I don’t. Not yet anyway. I’m going to stick more or less with the squad that won me the title. It’s slightly lightweight in some areas. Up front and at the back is where I could do with strengthening. Midfield is pretty solid.

I had a look around for a couple of defenders. I got CANNAVARO and PJINATNIGH. The latter player is a particularly useful acquisition. Kobayashi has never been totally comfortable at left back. I’ve been using Maldini and Prieto to fill in there when necessary. But Maldini is a natural CB, for my money, and Prieto is of course a DMF through and through. So I’m happy to have picked up a dedicated left-back at last.

On the contract renewals front, I decided to let Forestieri go. He is—or was—a journeyman striker who was playign less and less for me, and not doing much when he did play. With the likes of Kim Cyun Hi, Davies, Yamada, and Toni in my squad, there’s just no point keeping Forestieri around. I did have a look for a replacement but there just didn’t seem to be anyone available that I wanted to make an effort for. Yes, the season coming up—season 2018 (how time flies)—will be a busy one. I’m going for a Treble, and that means fixture pile-up. I might come to regret letting a player go without replacing him.

Here’s this season’s new kit. It’s the home kit’s turn for a change. I’m glad—last season’s mostly-white home kit was a bit wishy-washy for my tastes. For this season I’ve gone back to an all-sky blue kit. And it’s a deeper shade of blue than usual. The picture makes it look a lighter blue than it actually is.

I played two pre-season friendlies. They’re only useful for two things, in my view. First, they’re a lifeline when you’re struggling in the early seasons of a career and you need the money from a friendly win—or even a draw—to avoid a Game Over. And they’re very useful when it comes to giving new players a run-out or two before the season proper gets underway.

My two friendlies were against Napoli and that old favourite, the South American Selection. I drew 0-0 with Napoli in a nothing kind of game. And then the SA Selection absolutely trounced me 3-0. That was the score after 25 minutes of the first half. I did rather well to prevent them scoring any more in the rest of the macth. So I played two matches without scoring a single goal. This does not bode well for 2018.

I let the pre-season 2017 period go by without dabbling in the transfer market at all. I didn’t bring in any new players. After browsing through the various player lists I decided I’ve got enough good players already. I should be doing a lot better with them. And, slowly but surely, my talented youngsters are maturing. So I decided to skip through the whole pre-season phase without bothering to do anything other than renew the player contracts that needed to be renewed (and why does it always feel like a lot?!).

I also played a couple of pre-season friendlies. I won one, I drew one, nothing amazing happened and season 2017 got underway.

There was one other item of business. A kit change. I like to adopt a new kit every season. This season it was the away kit’s turn to change. I went for a stripey black-and-white design (front and back views on the left).

Onto the season proper, and something has got to change. Last season was about as mediocre as they come. I want to start scoring lots of goals and winning games. Yes, I know the saying about being careful what you wish for. In PES terms, a sudden ‘breakout’ into multi-goalfests and wonder dribbles would send PES2009 right down into the abyss along with last year’s disaster. That had better not happen.

But it’s not goalfests and wonder dribbles that I’m after. I just want PES to be like it was, in the old days when the series was at its peak on PS2. Back then I played Master League all year round and had success in it, but also found it consistently challenging at the same time. I want that feeling back again. Success and challenge. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

And something does feel different. Season 2017 has got off to a great start. I’ve played 10 matches, won 8, drawn 1, and lost 1. The goals are flying in and I’m at the top of the table. It means nothing to be at the top this early in the season so I’m not getting my hopes up.

My goals-scored column is of particular satisfaction to me. I’ve scored 20 goals in the 10 matches, which is comparable to my nearest challengers’ records. Only conceding 7 goals helps too, of course. I’ve always been good defensively but never managed to score many up the other end. If that changes this season, I will win the title. It’s a simple formula.

Most of my goals this season are coming from Davies. He’s a bit of a journeyman striker who plays wide on the left in my front 3. I’ve started to get some success with Davies using the old PES scoring method of cutting inside at 90 degrees and running horizontally across the area before unleashing a shot across the keeper. That horizontal run just outside the box has been a reliable PES chance-creating method for about three versions now, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t always work. The PES2009 defenders will often catch you.Davies’s unique ability is jinking this way and that, evading their attentions, working the space for the shot. He’s certainly been the star of the season so far with 8 of my 20 goals.

I’ve only been and gone and done it again. I’ve let another transfer negotiations period pass without bringing in any new players. This has happened a couple of times now in recent seasons. I swore not to let it happen again, but it has. Season 2015 is about to begin, and I’m stuck with the same squad that only just avoided relegation last season.

It was part carelessness, part calculation. First, despite having about 5000 spare salary points to play with in negotiations, I had to renew an awful lot of my existing players’ contracts. That shaved off 3000 points from my transfer kitty.

I’ve noticed that the renewals cost a lot more this year than in any previous ML. Time was that once you had a player he was yours no matter what. You could offer him a token 10 or 20 more points in contract renewals, and he’d take it. Not any more. GAMBINO, still my star player, held out for another 400 points over several tense negotiation weeks. I really thought he was going to just leave at one point. Now that would have been unprecedented in Master League.

While trying to secure all my existing players contracts, I was pretty hamstrung when it came to bidding for others. Not only was I unsure what players I would end up needing, I didn’t know how much money I’d have left to spend. And, of course, even after my players accepted their contracts they remained greyed-out for a further week, and unavailable to be used in trade-in negotiations. God dammit Seabass…

And so it was week 3 or week 4 before the dust had settled. Only then was I confident about how much cash I had to play with. All my players were available for trade if necessary. It already felt very late, but I gave it a go anyway.

Yet again I found myself bidding for Prieto. He’s the only established DMF worth having in the post-Mathieu world. (Mathieu is now too old at the start of an ML career to bother getting. I’ll wait for him to retire and come back as a Regen.)

I offered Traore+1500 points for Prieto, which his club accepted. However, just like before, Prieto himself was unimpressed with any of my salary offers, including my final, uber-generous offer of 1400 salary points. I guess my club prestige needs to rise at least another notch before he’ll buckle and sign. I’ll be back.

In the last few weeks of negotiations I had a look for that veteran, target-man-style of striker who I promised myself. I went after a few names that I found from Advanced Search. None of them would come. My club prestige is pretty darn low, as befits a team of pimply youngsters who only just stayed in Division 1 last season by the skin of their milk teeth.

So it’s another rollover on the transfer front. Yet again I have to look forward to mid-season, and see what I can do there. I cannot go on like this.

I scheduled two pre-season friendlies. One against the European Selection, the other against… a team whose name I can’t remember. Was it Calcio something? Whatever, I lost the European Selection game 1-0. It was an unjust result. I played really well and their goal was a scrambled, bobbling, deflected effort late on. I won the game against Calcio 1-0, so balance was partly restored.

The only other item of pre-season business was a kit-change. I was unsatisfied with both of last season’s kits for various reasons.

After literally seconds of messing about with the kit editor, I came up with two kits that are even worse. They seemed a good idea at the time. But now? No. Not so much. The vertical stripe down the centre of the home kit is just rubbish. And the yellow away kit is too wishy-washy for my liking. But what’s done is done.

This is all part of the fun of changing kits every season. You end up playing entire seasons wearing some unbelievable monstrosities. And if these kits are a bit dodgy, what’s going to happen when I actually start running out of ideas…