PES Chronicles

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’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…

Right, where was I. Oh yes, I was playing Master League on PES2009 and loving it. That’s where I was, and that’s where I am again. Back where I belong.

I’d just won promotion from Division 2 with my COVENTRY CITY side. It was a slightly disappointing promotion in the end, if that makes any sense. I could and should have gone up as Champions, but I let it slip in the last few games and ‘only’ finished second. It still hurts slightly, even days later, with a chunk of regular daily life and some FIFA09 wedged in-between. But never mind. I’ve got a Division 1 campaign to think about now.

I’ve got 16000 salary points in the bank. My players’ salary will be around the 11000 mark. 5000 points to play with isn’t really great, but it’s not too shabby either. A few Unbelonging players, a trade-in or two, maybe another Youth player. That’ll do me.

First things first—changing my kits again. This is something I do after every season. It really makes every season feel individual. I’ve come to see that it’s crucial to the long-term playability of a career mode that it has a feeling of differentiation from game to game, and from season to season.

The next thing on the agenda was changing the difficulty level before my first pre-season friendly. I’ve played most of the past five seasons on Professional difficulty. I’m not proud of the fact—but I’m not ashamed either. PES2009 is different enough from all its predecessors to feel strangely tough at first, and it still feels tough now.

But I do have a persistent worry. I’ve called it paranoia over the past few weeks. The worry is that PES2009 will blow up in my face and turn out to be exactly what I most feared it would be: PES2008.5. That’s more or less what I thought it was in my first impressions. The past few weeks have shown me that those first impressions were false, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t become my final impressions of PES2009.

So I’m always on the lookout for signs that PES2009 is beginning to falter. That it’s beginning to morph into its idiot forebear, PES2008. I think one of those early signs would be consistent high-scoring games.

My first pre-season friendly was such a game. It ended 4-2 to me, and I thought it was a surprisingly open game for my first one on Top Player. I’ve remarked before that Professional is reputed to be harder, in some ways, than Top Player. It’s something to do with the AI sitting back more and being harder to penetrate. On Top Player, the AI flies upfield at you, leaving gaps at the back. This 4-2 pre-season friendly certainly had signs of that. I was worried.

My next friendly was against the World XI. I took a 1-0 lead with a nice goal from DAVIES. I tried to trade him for Prieto in the mid-season but I’m glad now I didn’t succeed. He’s quietly turning into an essential striker on the left side of my front 3. In this game I went on to hit the woodwork FOUR TIMES. I’ve had games on Professional where I hit the woodwork twice, but they were rare. Four times? Is this a Top Player thing, or a strange one-off? I’ll have to see.

The World XI scored a late, late heartbreaker to finish the game 1-1. I was oddly happy with that. If this game had been another high-scoring one I’d have been worried.

I only scheduled the two pre-season friendlies this time around. I don’t need the money, unlike in my last few pre-seasons. I’m impatient to get into Division 1 and see what it’s like.

My actual transfer activity was pretty muted. After renewing all my existing players’ contracts (pricey) I only had about 3000 points left to spend.

After a few efforts to get Prieto I abandoned the attempt. I tried signing a few others too—I badly need a left-sided AMF in particular—but the scout reports revealed something rather stupid: they were refusing to come to me because they didn’t want to come to Division 2…

Now is that just STUPID or what? I’ve just won promotion to Division 1, but the game still treats me as if I’m in Division 2. This is as infuriating as the old two-legged cup tie problem, where the CPU can be 3-0 up on aggregate but if you take a 1-0 lead in the second leg it’ll think it’s losing and slip into God Mode. Why do these fiddly, stupid things persist in PES, year after year?

So I ended the pre-season negotations with no new players. Unusually. There weren’t even any Youths I liked the look of. And I’ve already got enough of them anyway. I think I can play well enough with the squad I’ve got to make it to mid-season, where my #1 priority will be Prieto.

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.