I’m really not impressed by some major elements of FIFA09’s Manager Mode. The transfer market for one. It is completely broken. It might as well not even be in the game. As long as you have enough money to pay the transfer fee and/or wages, you can get any player. It doesn’t matter what club you are, or what division you are in. There are no exceptions.

Starting with any lower league team you pretty quickly have the kind of bank balance that’d be the envy of many a top-division club. Sponsorship money is ridiculously inflated. You can sell any of your rubbish players straightaway for their full market value or greater. If a low offer comes in, you just reject it and wait another week—the higher offer invariably arrives. By the end of the first January transfer window in the first season, you can virtually replace your entire First XI with good or even great players.

No, FIFA09 is not Football Manager—and I wouldn’t want it to be. But I’d at least like it to be on the same level as PES’s Master League, where the much-maligned transfer system is actually hyper-realistic when compared with FIFA’s dismal effort.

And the transfer market isn’t even the half of it. There are many other issues. There are no night matches in Manager Mode, ever. (I know about the menu trick to get night games. It doesn’t count.)

EA’s publicised reason for this is that some of the stadia in the game have no night versions, and thus it would be inconsistent to have midweek games played at those stadia in broad daylight. This excuse utterly dumbfounds me. I find it hard to believe that presumably dozens of otherwise professional, sober games developers decided it would be more consistent for there to be no night matches at all in a 15-seasons-long career mode. For a game that would like to be reborn as every footy gamer’s favourite simulation, this is laughable. My genuine personal belief is that they just couldn’t be arsed with enabling Manager Mode night games—or that they simply forgot it. The whole ‘consistent/inconsistent’ argument reeks of the kind of spin put on things after the fact to make a silly oversight more palatable to the punters.

If FIFA2010 appears without a radically transformed Manager Mode I’ll be very disappointed. In fact, even at this early stage I’d have to deem it either make or break for me. The transfer market is only part of what needs to change. Just give us night matches, dynamic weather effects, realistic transfers and injuries (injuries! don’t get me started on injuries!), and that’ll be the current generation of football games all but sewn up.

Now that I’ve worked myself up into this frenzy of moaning, there’s another thing.

I’m bloody irritated by FIFA09’s North American-style treatment of football teams as being singular entities. In Europe, or at least in the UK segment of it, we would say (for example) Coventry City are through to the Cup Final. But FIFA09 would say Coventry City is through to the Cup Final. The goddamn verb is just plain wrong! It makes me double-take every time I see it.

——————

After all that solid-gold moaning, here are my House Rules. I’ll be applying them strictly to my current Coventry City career. The rules are deliberately straightforward. I could draw up complex tables and graphs and computational charts designed to tell me what to do every time I want to make a substitution, but I’d prefer to get on with the game.

I can sum up the meat-and-potatoes of my House Rules in three paragraphs:

• Transferring players in and out. I have to maintain a squad of at least 24 players. No selling off of the youngsters willy-nilly. No buying-in of superstars, unless it’s realistic for them to come. My transfers must be appropriate at all times. I can never buy players way, way above the average ability level of my squad. If and when I make it to the Premier League, then I can start picking up better players.
• Staff upgrades. Just like my transfer policy, my staff upgrades must run in parallel to the growth of the club. At the moment, down near the bottom of the Championship, I can only upgrade my Attacking, Midfield, Defensive, and Goalkeeping staff to the 4/10 level. If I get to the top half of the table and hold steady there, I can go to 5/10. If I get promoted, 6/10. And so on.
• A special case here is the Fitness coach. Upgraded past a certain point, your players never get tired between matches. So the maximum I am ever allowed to upgrade Fitness to is 4/10. At this level, I’m forced to practise Master League-style squad rotation from match to match. If I win the Premier League with Coventry City, I can go up to 5/10. But no further than that, ever.

And that is all. The rules are subject to change at any time, depending on how realistic or unrealistic I want to make things.

I’ve already played a number of games in my first season. Things have not gone well for Coventry City, who are down near the foot of the table. So far, then, yes, it’s all proving very realistic…

The last three (largely meaningless) games of this 2008 season are a good opportunity to take a quick look at one of my most reliable players—my right back, Postma.

He’s been an ever-present in my side since he arrived in the middle of season 2007. At the moment he’s 18 years old. His positions are SB/WB/SMF. Sadly, he has no special ability stars, but his key baseline stats go a long way to making up for that shortcoming.

Attack:78
Defence:76
Agility:81
Acceleration:80
Mentality:79

The above stats really do show up on the pitch. Postma can outrun almost any attacker and keeps his head when all about him are losing theirs.

A good right back (or, for that matter, a good left-back) is so important in PES2008.

They’ve always been important, but in the next-gen version of the game, with the opposition’s fleet-footedness and tricksy shimmying at the byline, side-backs who have good speed, tackling, and fitness are a necessity. Worth their weight in gold.

The benchmark for side-backs in PES2008, for me, has to be my old right-back from my last ML career, Guimaraes. Postma isn’t quite up to his level—he’s a long way below it—but he’s the next-best side-back I’ve played with so far, and he has a long way to go yet.

Postma’s development graph shows that his peak is many years away yet, and that it’ll be pretty high. Nothing jaw-droppingly spectacular, but it’ll do me.

—————–

Just three games left in the 2008 season. Then I’ll get down to some serious business in the transfer market, shore up my squad with some reliable talent, and make a real fist of season 2009. That’s the plan, anyway.

Immediately after I beat Sampdoria 4-3 in the D2 Cup Final, I came up against them in the League. This happens a lot in PES, and PES2008 is no exception. It happens in real life too, so it’s not really a cause for complaint.

Perhaps it was inevitable that my eye wasn’t really on the ball. The exertions of the cup final took their toll and I went through the game just pressing the buttons rather than engaged as fully as I should have been. The CPU took full advantage of my inattention just before half time, when yet another clearance from one of my corners landed ever-so-neatly right at the feet of a Sampdoria midfielder. He turned and ran from almost level with his own penalty area.

Upfield he went, past one defender, past two, jinking around a third—and then clean through on goal. It was my own fault. I can usually stop these post-corner runs that the CPU loves to go on. The Square button is my friend. I use a spare player to challenge while I get the player under my control into prime position to make a challenge or slide-tackle, with good results. Usually. But I was too hasty this time.

I dashed my keeper, James, out to meet the Sampdoria player on the edge of the box, but a shake of the hips later and the CPU had an open goal to slide the ball into. It finished 1-0 to them.

I perked up for the next game—the season’s penultimate game—against Feyenoord. And what a game it was for me. I scored six goals in a comprehensive 6-1 rout of the fallen Dutch masters. I call them fallen because in season 2007 they used to sweep my team aside with pitiful ease, but things are different now.

Here’s a couple of the goals, both from Altintop, my star man of the moment:

In the last game of the season, Sunderland seemed determined to prove that they are my bogey team, despite me believing that they’re not. Early on I had Pjinatnigh red-carded for nothing. It was a tackle from the side, not from behind, and it was up near the halfway line… Most referees in real life or in other football games, including most previous PES games, wouldn’t even have given a yellow card.

But I always play well with 10 men. I got it back to 2-2. First a penalty that was won by Matuzalem and then dispatched by him with style into the top corner, high up where no keeper is ever going to reach it. They’re the best possible kinds of penalties. In PES the game sometimes decides you’ll miss a penalty for no discernible reason. We need better penalties in PES. Here’s hoping for a (whisper it) FIFA-style power meter in PES2009 and beyond.

In literally the last seconds of the game, Leonardo popped up on the edge of the Sunderland box to do this:

I love goals that go in off the post. I loved this one. A hard-fought draw, and a fair result.

————–

And that was season 2008. Must do better next season.

Final position: 15th
Won:10 Drew:10 Lost:18
Goals scored:49 Goals conceded:58 Goal difference:-9
Yellow cards: 42 Red cards: 24

Teams relegated from Division 1: PSV, Paris St Germain, Tottenham.
Teams promoted from Division 2: Real Elcherino, Ajax, Torino

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this season. Having abruptly abandoned PES2008 at the turn of the year, and spending weeks flirting with FIFA, it was good to come home. What turned me off PES2008 was how extraordinarily easy the game becomes when using good players. It was never thus for me before. I was shocked and—frankly—disgusted to find that it was so for me now.

The importance of House Rules—as strict as they need to be, and no stricter (there’s no point in getting silly)—cannot be underestimated when trying to extend this game’s longevity. Self-handicapping is the way to go. No, we shouldn’t have to do it (curse you Seabass), but we play with the PES we have, not the PES we want.

Next season, my third with Singers FC, has got to be a promotion year. The negotiation period is coming up and it’s got to be a good ‘un. I’ll be taking my time and making my decisions carefully. I’ll also be tweaking my transfer market House Rules a little. Not too much—just enough to keep myself honest…

The story so far: after becoming extremely disenchanted with this year’s PES offering (on the PlayStation3, c’est naturellement), and trying and failing to rekindle the spark with PES5, I have spent the past several days searching for some way to play one or more other football games for the rest of the year.

Next-gen FIFA08 has been the leading candidate. I’ll be posting some time next week about the culmination of my FIFA08 Quadruple attempt with Coventry City in the English Premier League. There’s PES2008 business to deal with first. It’s very early days, but the signs are looking good for both games. At the moment it’s my plan to alternate between the two for the rest of the football game year. I’m looking at a two-state solution, people.

When I abandoned my second PES2008 Master League career and stormed off in a huff, I had just finished the first season with my team, Singers FC. The negotiation period was ahead of me.

I resumed that career today exactly where I had left off.

First on the list of priorities: get rid of Elcherino. He was sensational for me in the latter half of the first season. A bit too sensational. He scored at least a hat trick - at least a hat trick! - in almost every game he played. He represented everything that is wrong about the gameplay of next-gen PES2008 (an utterly different game from the PS2 version).

Most of Elcherino’s goals were akin to the sort you could score on previous PES games on the lowest difficulty level. It just wasn’t PES. I’m sure the kids love this aspect of PES2008. 7-2 scorelines are delightful if you just want to fill up some time between sessions of Halo3. Sorry, kids.

Elcherino is a classic player in PES2008. In years past I packed my ML teams with the likes of Michel Platini, George Best, Eric Cantona, Van Basten, Pele, Maradona, Zico, Gordon Banks… the list goes on. PES is its own world, and I’ve always been happy to use the old players alongside the current ones. It was never the case before (for me, an average player) that the Classics were absurdly overpowered, as they are in this year’s game.

Oh well. No more classic players in PES2008. I just have to get on with it. Curse you Seabass!

I’ll get rid of Elcherino as soon as I start negotiations proper - I should be able to trade him in for someone pretty good. An AMF with Middle Shooting is on the shopping list.

Before getting to negotiations, I have to finalise my House Rules. These are the special rules that I need to put in place to stop myself running away with the Master League after a certain tipping point is passed. In theory.

Here are the House Rules:

1. Squad size of no more than 25 players.

2. I’m not allowed to have any of the players I had in my last ML career. With just three exceptions: Maldini, Beerens, and Andy Cole. For various reasons I don’t think I saw the best of them. Maldini in particular was only with me for half a season as a Youth player. If any of the three become overpowered, my other House Rules would make me have to get rid of them.

3. At least 5 of the original Default squad must remain in the squad at all times.

4. When original Default squad members retire, they must be replaced from the pool of old-style Default players on the transfer market (Barota and Vornander et al) .

5. At least one original Default squad member must start every match and play at least a full half.

6. No Elcherino-style players are allowed in the squad. Primarily this means: no classic players. But it also means that I am not allowed to buy any players from the non-classic pool who already are, or might turn into, Elcherino-style wonder dribblers. Additionally, should any of my existing players show signs of developing into such a player, I am not allowed to play with that player, and I have to sell, trade, or release him at the first opportunity.

Only 6 House Rules for now - but in combination, they add up to something quite challenging, I think.

I considered including a ’skill cap’, i.e. preventing myself from using any player whose Overall rating was above 90, or even 85. But that may be premature.

It’s perfectly possible for a player to have high stats in many areas without being overpowered on the dribbling front.

A skill cap would also remove lots of the immersion of Master League for me: taking a young player from nothing and turning him into a legend. I’ll play this one by ear. If it becomes a problem, I’ll introduce a skill cap and have done with it.