Last night I had a few games on FIFA09. They were my first games on FIFA09 for about ten days. And I had a great time. It was on the Xbox360 (I’m still waiting for the PS3 patch). I only meant to have one quick game, just to see, but ended up playing two Exhibition games and two games in my Atletico Madrid MM career. I was amazed and enraptured all over again by just how good a football game FIFA09 is. But I was most surprised by being able to slip back into the FIFA09 style of gameplay so easily after all this time playing PES2009.

Several weeks ago when I first tried to switch from one game to the other, I was worried about ‘contamination’ in both directions. Trying to play PES2009 as if it’s FIFA09 and FIFA09 as if it’s PES2009 does both games a great disservice. But last night I barely tried to ‘PES it up’ at all. Later on I did, but that was when I was behind late on in a match, and getting frustrated. I think all of us who ‘grew up’ on ISS/PES will never be able to stop ‘PESing about’ to some degree for the rest of our natural lives, in any football game. (We’ll probably still try to play Space Soccer 2023, or whatever, with our fingers firmly gripping R1…)

FIFA09 is a sublime game. I’m really looking forward to playing it regularly again on my PS3 when the patch comes. And it looks now as if I will be able to play FIFA and PES, together, this year. That initial period of strangeness when it felt impossible for me to play both games might be over.

In a very peculiar and unexpected way, this year might be one of the best possible years to be a football gamer. How strange is that? The win-win thing, finally. It’s still early days yet (I’m thinking about January again) but how strange, and how great, would that be?

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Season 2010-2011 in my PES2009 Master League has come to an inglorious end. After picking up those few extra players in the mid-season negotations, I won a couple of games and things looked rosy. But I haven’t won a game since. The season dribbled to a close with a couple of feeble draws and a final shattering run of six consecutive defeats.

And so I’ll spend another season at least in Division 2. Maybe in the dim and distant ML past I’ve had worse starts to a career, but if I did I don’t remember them. I think this is the worst I’ve ever done. For that reason alone, PES2009 is already a remarkable game.

The one crumb of comfort I can take from this new failure of a season is that my youngsters are starting to blossom. Jackson is turning into a reliable player at CB. His current development isn’t that great, but it’s still coming along nicely. Another season or two and he’ll be a proper defensive giant.

And then there’s Dietrich. A young superstar-in-waiting DMF, he’s just about to start bossing midfields in the manner of great PES DMFs of the past (Mathieu & Bradley & Prieto & co.). I’m expecting great things from him in the future (a few goals would be particularly nice). Here’s a fairly gratuitous picture of Dietrich, appropriately bathed in a celestial glow:

And now here’s this season’s final league table. Yes, it was another bad season, but who’s that team in bottom place?

It’s not COVENTRY CITY in 12th place, that’s for sure. At least I’m off the bottom and things are moving in the right direction. The only way is up…

There are times in Master League when, puzzlingly, for no apparent reason whatsoever, you can go several games without scoring a goal. Often the CPU teams can’t score either. 0-0 draws become the order of the day.

My longest such run was back in PES4, I think—about half a dozen games at the start of one season passed without a goalie having to pick the ball out of the back of the net.

The scoreless runs can strike at any time, but I have noticed that they’re most common at the start of a season when you’re playing with several new players and/or you finished the previous season badly.

One day soon I’ll have to look, in detail, at the long-running and vexed question of whether there is a player/team hidden morale setting in Master League. I think there isn’t, but plenty think otherwise.

Here at the start of season 2012 I’ve played four games and scored no goals. I’ve conceded just one goal, against Real Madrid, which meant I lost that game 0-1. With the scoreline blank I was more than holding my own and would have been satisfied with the 0-0 draw. They got the goal in the 87th minute or some accursed minute like that. Damn them all to hell.

The other three games, against various Deportivos and Atleticos etc., all gave me a point apiece. The teams up at the top are already on 12 points and 10 points and so on. I’ve got 3 points. Already, it’ll take a Herculean effort, or failing that an actual miracle, to catch them up. Already, I might just be playing for pride, and for cash, with next season in mind.

Finishing high enough to qualify for Europe has got to be my only realistic target. Could I get into a Champions League spot? Unlikely.

The only bright spot has been Bradley. He’s been ridiculously effective as a DMF.

Bradley was absent from the Madrid game due to tiredness (which may have been a factor in their goal—it built up down the middle). In the other games I’ve found him to be almost superhuman as a defensive force in midfield, great going forward, and a competent stand-in at CB when required.

The only thing he’s let me down on so far is putting the ball in the back of the net. Every time I get him on the ball in the ‘DMF shooting hole’ (everyone who plays a 4-3-3 like mine will know exactly where that is) I let rip with stupendous shots galore. They’ve nearly all gone close, but have either hit woodwork or been saved. One day soon I’m going to score a sixty-yarder with Bradley. I just know it.

Mid-table mediocrity. The most dismal phrase in the footballing lexicon.

I win one, I lose one. I go up a few places, I fall a few places. I lose one, I win one. I fall a few places, I go up a few places….

It’s as if I am under some kind of magic spell. I can neither rise nor fall. My team is in some kind of PES stasis field. As idle as a painted oil tanker upon a painted ocean.

I’ve been looking long and hard at my 4-3-3 formation. And I’ve been thinking the unthinkable.

I’m going with the above 4-4-2 formation as my new starting formation for all games. This is a big deal for me.

Duffy is a DMF. Shimizu is a CMF. Chairman Mao and De Ridder are SMFs. I’ve positioned Schwarz slightly deeper than Frutos because the latter is the bigger and better striker right now. Schwarz still gets most of his goals by receiving the ball and running with it, playing one-twos, etc. Frutos is a strong giant of a striker who belongs just in front of Schwarz.

I’ve played 4-3-3 for as long as I can remember. I don’t think I’ve ever seriously tried out any other formation in Master League. Even when struggling in PES5, and for over two seasons now in PES2008, switching the formation to something else has been unthinkable.

Until now. Defending is the key to success in PES2008. Currently, my goals scored tally is an average of almost 1 goal per game. Nothing spectacular, but within operating parameters for a football team.

You would expect to pick up results simply by keeping clean sheets, something I found relatively easy to do in years gone by. In PES5 and PES6, after the tough first campaign or two, I conceded an average of 8 goals per season.

My current goals against tally is an average of almost 2 per game. Defending against the CPU is my problem right now. I’m tired of losing games after having 60% of possession and 15 or 20 shots on goal, only to see the CPU score with all of its 3 shots on goal.

My problem has been stopping the CPU from creating openings in midfield and in front of my defence. Having a lone DMF is all well and good - but he’s got to be good, and he’s got to have good support from the AMFs and, when up against it, from the CFs. Duffy and co. currently are not up to scratch.

I could have tinkered with the positioning and defensive settings in my existing 4-3-3. But I’m thinking right now that a few imaginary lines on a virtual chalkboard are no substitute for having solid bodies placed squarely in the way of the rampaging CPU midfielders and attackers.

I tested the 4-4-2 formation in a couple of Exhibition matches (England vs Germany; England vs Brazil), and I’m quite liking it.

Yes, I feel a bit lost and bewildered when I get the ball up front and there’s only two central strikers to look for. But the two wide midfielders in a 4-4-2 are much better at wing penetration than the more centrally-placed AMFs in my 4-3-3 ever were.

I won the Exhibition games 3-1 and 2-0 on Top Player. Granted, with good players the 4-4-2 might have worked out well, but how will it work with my middling players in Master League? Only one way to find out.

Switching to 4-4-2 at this stage could all go very wrong. But I have a good feeling about it, for some reason.