Pro Evolution Soccer has certain traditions. Certain things that seem to be the same year upon year, whatever other changes are made. Rituals that never alter. Master League comes equipped with a whole host of them, some positive, some negative, some neutral. One of my ‘favourites’ is the mysterious dip in form that follows your first run of wins in Master League.

Master League seems at its most unfair to me when I’ve just started getting a team together, and just started doing well. That first run of good form has only just come in this season—which is season 4! It’s completely unheard-of even for me, an average player at best. It’s never been this late before.

Finding some form and consistency is one thing; keeping it is another. When form arrives, there’s always one game that comes along quite quickly, against God-knows-who, that I just can’t seem to do anything about. Sometimes there’s a cluster of such games.

I had a few of them in the run-up to the mid-season negotations. Going 1-0 up, only to get pegged back to 1-1. Or riding out a CPU storm to cling on like grim death to a 0-0, only to have a heartbreaker of a flukey goal scored against me.

My ‘favourite’ ones of these are when my keeper parries the ball onto some part of a defender’s body, and it goes into the net. I’ve scored a few of these at the other end, so the mechanic works for as well as against me. But I’d almost rather not score any of them than have just one scored against me in a big game. I know, I know. They happen in football. They’re ‘realistic’. I know.

This season I’ve played with a squad of 17. It has been tough. The Division 2 schedule is often kind to you, with numerous rest weeks, but at other times the strain on a small squad can be savage. Playing some games with seven or eight blatantly unfit players has been… interesting. At least it’s taught me that you can pick half-fit players and they will do a good job for you—for 60 minutes. Perhaps this tiredness—a chronic lack of stamina, from game to game—has contributed to the defensive confusions at times.

You can’t beat having a good, large squad with plenty of fit players to choose from. I think I’m going to make it to the end of this season with plenty of money in the bank. If my overall form keeps up there won’t be any danger of a Game Over. In fact I should have enough spare cash to pay for a larger squad. So I went shopping in the mid-season negotiation weeks. I decided to play it safe and just get three new players. Enough to spread the burden.

I found an old friend in KIM CYUN HI. (And I’m annoyed that I already used The Return of the Kim as a post title back in July.) I hope he’s at least as good as I found him to be in the PS2/PSP version of PES2008. Others raved about him, but I ‘only’ found him to be very good even after several seasons’ development. I’d settle for ‘very good’ in PES2009.

I also picked up KOEMAN and CEM, two SMFs who can play in a wide variety of positions. CEM alone can play in about five positions, including CB and SB, usefully. I’ve got high hopes for these two as well. All three new signings are Youth players, 17 or 18 years old.

Despite the maddening late CPU heartbreakers, I’m doing well in the League, a lot better than in the last three seasons: Here’s a snapshot of the table after 14 games:

But for a couple of those timely late CPU goals I’d be in the promotion positions right now, maybe even top. I’m not happy about my goals-scored tally. 8 goals in 14 games is pathetic, really. But I’ve got to be happy, overall, with my goals-against. Good defending is why I’m in the position I’m in, 3 points off a promotion place just after mid-season.

It’s pre-season in my surprisingly tough Master League career in the surprisingly good PES2009 on PS3. A few weeks ago, after a sacking on FIFA09’s Manager Mode I picked up Konami’s creaking old game again, just to see how the old girl felt after a few weeks with EA’s loose-limbed young hussy. And I’m still here. It’s far too early yet to draw any final conclusions from this. My own tentative conclusion is that I seem to have two very playable and thoroughly enjoyable football games this year, and I don’t want the feeling to end.

My Master League struggles are unprecedented on any version of PES. This will be my 4th season in the bottom division. Over the past few seasons I’ve struggled to pay the salary. This time last season I was forced to cut my squad to just 23 players. I thought that was bad enough but now I’ve got a shortfall of 3300 points and it’s going to be tight. Very tight.

I scheduled 5 pre-season friendlies again. I was going to change the fixtures chosen for me and choose different, weaker teams, but in the end I left the fixtures well alone. I wanted to take on the bigger teams and hopefully snatch a victory or two. Even a few draws would help. The bigger the team, the more money you get for a win or draw.

Before playing my first match, against Feyenoord, I changed my kits again. This is something I do after nearly every ML season and always have done, really. I only took a break from doing it last year because PES2008 just wasn’t worth the effort. PES2009, however, is.

I went for a mostly-white home kit with Sky Blue trimmings and sleeves. The away kit is a kind of burgundy-red with Sky Blue trimmings. Whatever kit I go for I like to keep at least a hint of Sky Blue somewhere. Master League with its version of Coventry City is all taking place in my head anyway. But I like to keep some kind of connection, however tenuous, with the real football world.

I did a lot better than last year in my pre-season friendlies. A draw and a win brought in 1200 points. Perhaps this is a reflection that I’m slowly—very slowly—starting to get to grips with PES2009.

I put a whole host of players up for sale, hoping for a similar stroke of good fortune that saw the CPU actually buy one of them last year. This year, however, I had no offers and faced the last week of negotiations with a serious cash shortfall and a serious headache. You get a Game Over in Master League if you can’t pay your team’s wages at the end of the last week of negotiations.

I suppose it could have been worse. Thanks to that draw and win in the friendlies, I ‘only’ had to release 5 players. Among them was Schone, one of my signings in that first mid-season negotiations. That one hurt.

The upshot of all my releasing is that I’m left with a squad of just 17 players. Which is ridiculous. But it’s not as bad as it might appear. The Division 2 schedule is a pretty forgiving one. Matches are spread over many weeks, and there are lots of rest breaks. All I have to do is struggle through to the mid-season negotiations, and then I can pick up a few new players.

On the right is my complete, ridiculously small squad for the start of season 2011-2012. This is going to be hard work. I actually can’t wait to get started.

Last season I just about squeezed through negotiations with 30 salary points to spare. This season it was even tighter. The margin was 11 points. I can’t go on living dangerously like this. My plan for the coming season is simple: win some bloody matches…

It’s a weird game, this PES2009. Coming so hot on the heels of the biggest FAIL that the ISS/PES series has ever known, it started very much on the back foot. I was suspicious of it—and I still am suspicious of it now, in truth. But it is a good game. And it’s got depths that you might never discover if you do what I did and just react in abject horror to its ‘on-rails’ feel after the liquidity of FIFA09. But the truth is—or seems to be at the moment—that they’re both good games.

That’s my two penn’orth anyway. It’s already a familiar theme from me this year, and I hope to be repeating myself, in various forms, from now until September 2009, when the next big thing comes along.

Not a single win in the first half of my 3rd season in Master League on PES2009. This is not good. This isn’t how things are meant to be. You’re meant to gradually improve, season on season, in Master League. But it seems I’m not getting better—I’m getting worse.

In the last league game before the mid-season negotiations, my opponents were Aston Villa. They got relegated from Division 1 last season. As Nelson Muntz might say: ha-ha… In real life, ’the Villa’ are Coventry City’s traditional derby rivals. FIFA09 seems to think our rivals should be Birmingham City—but no, that’s just plain wrong.

I was pumped up for the game against Villa, despite it all being in my mind. I beat them 1-0 with a late goal. My first win of the season, and what a fixture to get it in.

The final game before mid-season was the first leg of the quarter final of the Divsion 2 Cup. My opponents? Aston Villa, of course. I lost badly, 0-3, at home. The second leg will be just a formality for them.

And so to the all-too-short mid-season negotiations. I was in a poor situation money-wise, but decided to take a risk. I picked up another 3 players from the Youth list.

GAMBINO is an amazingly good SB/SMF. I’ll play him as an AMF, or even as a CF if need be.

CONWEY is just an average-rated, promising-looking CB.

And it was about time, I thought, that I picked up a good young goalkeeper for the future. I had my pick of several decent-looking GKs in the Youth list. The magic of a well-known name swung me towards DUDEK.

All three are 17 years old and will cost me another 1300 salary points at season’s end. This is living very dangerously, but it’s a calculated risk. I’m banking on these acquisitions—GAMBINO in particular—enabling me to pick up  wins and draws that I otherwise wouldn’t have, thus earning extra money, and thus negating any possibility of salary trouble.

And, as a bonus, I also managed to send out two players on loan. LOTHAR and GUTIERREZ went to CPU clubs for a combined fee of 950 points. That relieves the pressure a bit.

I lost my first game after the negotiations period, anti-climactically. It’s always disappointing to lose this one, with all players fit and in form.

But I won the next two games. I played GAMBINO as a striker in the second game and won it 3-1.

Using CAPITAL LETTERS for player names, as PES2009 insists on doing, is contagious. It does make them STAND OUT. I’ll use the convention myself from now on.

PES2009 is destined to frighten me every time I score a few goals in a game, or have what I regard as an easier time of it. I’ll always wonder if it’s about to show its true PES2008-themed colours. After this couple of wins, I’m no longer as worried about paying my end-of-season bills (it’ll still be tight, but I should make it). I’m now more worried about PES2009’s mask slipping, and the ghost of PES2008 coming back to haunt me.