“Familiarity breeds contempt.” True. Its corollary statement, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, is true too. After a break of two days (spent playing FIFA08, with great enjoyment), I resumed my Master League career on PES2008 with pleasure.

At first I was slightly taken aback—again—by the relative pace of PES. This is something that has been apparent to me all year. PES is just too fast now. Even though I’d only been away for two days, the difference in gameplay speed between PES and FIFA is massive. FIFA08 now seems to me to be the ‘natural’ speed for a football video game. Perhaps it could do with being a tad faster (UEFA2008—6% faster than FIFA08—is about right), but it’s still in the general area where a football game ought to be.

The first few minutes of my first game back on PES2008 were spent wondering how I, or anyone, could ever have regarded this fast-forwarded football game as being anything but farcical. But I soon re-adjusted. It didn’t take long before my uneasy sensation was replaced by absorption, and enjoyment. PES gameplay—its core elements, set apart from surface details like graphics, speed, and presentation—has never been bettered, in my opinion. FIFA08 is a great effort, but my dream football game would still marry FIFA08-style pace and graphics and features with PES gameplay. (Could the two ever go together? EA are certainly giving it their best shot…)

I came up against Basel, one of this season’s newly-promoted teams, in the Division 1 Cup. The supposedly ‘little’ teams can be the toughest opponents out there. The big guns just can’t match them in terms of sheer annoyance. True to form, Basel held me at bay for most of a sterile encounter with few chances on either side. I did score about 15 minutes from the end to make it 1-0 to me. I was playing at home, and I thought: great, I’ve got a goal and kept a clean sheet. Job done!… And so naturally they scored with mere seconds remaining.

A 1-1 result at home in the Cup is a pretty bad result. You have to score in the away leg, and any PES fan will know that this makes for a very nervy game. If the AI turns up in a certain kind of mood, you could play all day and not score a goal, and that’s you out of the Cup. I find it best to approach such games calmly and methodically—not going all-out for an early goal to settle the nerves, but just telling myself it’d be really nice to get one before half time… In most cases this attitude works.

It worked this time too. I thumped Basel 0-5, making the final aggregate score 1-6 to me. I came out of this game straight into a league match against the same team. Basel again, at their place again. I beat them this time as well: it ended 0-3 this time, although I could have had 10.

I went straight into the final game of the group stage in the European Championships. My opponents (I nearly typed ‘enemy‘ just then) were Sochaux, another one of the tricky, maddening, supernaturally lucky ‘minnows’ in my Master League setup. They’ve punished me badly several times before now. I hate them. I hate them more than I hate Osasuna, and that’s saying something.

But the break from PES has done me a lot of good. I’m playing with focus and relish—the two magic ingredients of any great game. I thumped Sochaux 4-0 and guaranteed my progression to the knockout stages. I’m still in both Cups and I’m in the top 3 in the league table, albeit still 10 points behind the leaders, Valencia. Another Treble is still on, but I haven’t got much wiggle room in the league.

So… it’s season 2017 of my ongoing Master League career with my very own Coventry City team in the ‘last-gen’ version of PES2008. Last season I won the Treble, largely thanks to a very kind CPU team obligingly letting me overhaul its eleven-point lead during the final quarter of the season. This season my aim was to win a Treble properly—i.e., get to the top of the league and stay there. I wanted to win the championship under my own steam.

So far it just hasn’t worked out. I started the season averagely, then I hit a poor spell, then I played okay for a game or two, then I was average again, and now I’m poor again. I’m languishing in the also-ran positions. Once again I find myself 10+ points behind the team at the top (Valencia again). The difference this season is that we haven’t even got to the mid-season negotiations yet. So there’s even more time for the CPU to transparently let me back into the title race…

I played most of the start of the season on the PSP version, then switched back to the PS2 version just a few days ago. It’s been pretty disastrous, really. I don’t know if I’ve failed to adjust back to using a full-size controller or what, but at times I’ve literally struggled to string two passes together. It’s peculiar, because the PSP version is reputed to be the harder of the two versions. (Apart from minor elements of the control scheme, the two versions are identical in terms of gameplay, but naturally the Internet—God love it—thinks differently.)

I had to let the league take care of itself and make sure I didn’t lose my grasp on the two Cups. In the Division 1 Cup I’d had a terrible first leg at my ground against Real Madrid that I lost 0-2. First legs at home don’t come much worse. Well, 0-3 or more would have been worse, but my point stands.

In the return leg I felt I had to score early. Only an early goal would settle me down and enable me to go on playing calmly and methodically in search of a second, equalising goal. If I didn’t score at least in the first half I’d probably get all anxious and aggressive, and end up crashing out of the Cup.

I got the early goal. I think it was in about the 20th minute. Kim Cyun Hi was the scorer. He has continued to show great form this season, but as an all-round striker there are others better than him for now. I do believe it’ll be two or three more seasons before I see the best of Kim. He’s still young and unformed. His skills are all pretty much there already, but he lacks stamina. When he’s fully fit and on form he’s already pretty sensational.

I got the second goal before half time, which was a bonus. That made it 2-2 overall, with neither team having the advantage on away goals. However, I was the away side this time, so another goal from me would effectively kill the game off. And I got it. It came in the middle of the second half—Kim Cyun Hi again, tapping in a square ball from Dos Santos on the edge of the box. 2-3 to me with three away goals meant I was virtually unassailable. Real Madrid would need to get two goals. They got one goal—of course they did—to make it 3-3 on aggregate, but couldn’t get the second. I went through on away goals.

I’m holding steady in the league. I’m back to winning ways at least. Although—typically—Valencia at the top have been winning as well, maintaining the 10-point distance between us. I’m absolutely confident that they’ll start losing as long as I keep winning. With just one more game-week before the mid-season negotiations, there are worse positions I could be in.

Until quite recently on this blog, I had a trainspotter-ish tradition of maintaining detailed records of the progress of my seasons. I stopped doing it because taking notes during and after every game session was interfering with my PES play, and I couldn’t have that.

As a season passed I used to post the amount of yellow and red cards I’d received. It was always noticeable that until I got some really good players, my disciplinary record was absolutely shocking. If a CPU team was beating me I often hacked them down just for the fun of it. With the result that I usually had two or three times as many yellow cards as games played, and almost as many reds.

Now that my Master League team is a mature one, packed with stars from back to front and side to side, there’s rarely any cause for me to get frustrated and foolhardy. I can more than handle myself, and if I can’t, there’s no point losing my discipline when I’m only a good passing move away from getting a goal back or snatching an equaliser, right?

Well. Yesterday I mentioned that I have returned to playing the PS2 version of PES2008 after several continuous days on the PSP. I had a strange first few games back on the bigger console—a string of 0-0 draws followed by a paltry 1-0 win in Europe. That happens in PES—and long may it continue to happen. Goal droughts are a feature of real football. Personally speaking, the more PES is like real football the better I like it.

Following those first strange games, I have continued with my season. Barely more than a third of the way through, I was fifth in the league table, just seven points behind the leaders. I was still in both Cups. My target for season 2017 is a Treble, so I was still on course.

But I have been on a shocking little run. I’ve been taking bad defeats,and have once again reverted to my old bad habit of scything down CPU players left, right, and centre. Some matches have seen me end with 7 men on the pitch.

PES2008 feels as if it has changed utterly since the last time I played it on the big console. Truth be told, the game has felt a little different all season. The CPU players seem a lot more aggressive, and they seem to stay that way for longer. It seems harder to score goals. I’m certain that these impressions are false. It’s always possible that there is a hidden extra difficulty level in Master League that you unlock by winning a Treble, as I did last season.

But it’s unlikely. They’d never include an extra difficulty level and not tell anybody about it. Would they? No, they wouldn’t. So it’s not the game that has been different over these past few days; I am the one who is different… Plainly I’m still suffering from PES fatigue. I’m obviously not giving the game the full concentration it needs. I think a break is in order—a FIFA08-shaped break, once I get to the mid-season. That’ll be in a day or two.

For now, I’d better re-focus my energies and start trying to turn around these terrible results. I lost a shocking game in my European group: Sochauz beat me 4-1. They were 4-0 up and cruising—for a change it was I, the human player, who bagged a cheeky late consolation. Hah. The result was bad, but I’ll still qualify from the group. More serious was the result in the first leg—at home—in the Division 1 Cup. My opponents, Real Madrid, beat me 0-2. Ouch. Two away goals to them means it’s going to be a challenging away leg at their place. The Treble could be gone before the mid-season.

I lost or drew my other league games. My indiscriminate, dirty fouling conceded free kicks and penalties, and got my players sent off. I was my own worst enemy. All the CPU teams had to do was turn up.

All of which leaves me in 3rd place in the table. I’m 10 points behind the leaders, Valencia. As I found last season, that doesn’t mean a thing. This is a computer game, not reality. If/when I start getting the results again I’ll soon be back up there, challenging for the title.