When I fired up PES2008 this morning, my PS3 blinked at me a couple of times, then displayed the news that there was another patch for the game. It was 130MB in size and took a little over three minutes to download.

This was a surprise. I’ve heard no rumours about another patch. When the game started I was keen to see what changes had been made. I think that this patch may be intended to rectify the still-awful condition of the PS3’s online game. I’m not big on online play and I didn’t have time this morning to go online to find out what, if anything, has changed.

One thing that I was hoping for was for pre-game kit selection to be introduced in all offline game modes. But no, it wasn’t. We’re going to be left twisting in the wind on this one all year. Kit selection exists in Exhibition mode, so why, in the name of all that’s holy, is it missing in every other mode? Why?

First impressions of offline gameplay after the new patch is that replays seem to be a lot smoother, and actually watchable most of the time. But you can never underestimate the placebo effect. I’ve got a few days off work and will be playing PES2008 a lot - online and offline - so I’ll post in a day or two about this new patch.

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Here in the last third of the season, it’s time to face up to something: the Superleague is hard.

Thanks to the cash brought in by Elcherino’s notorious/celebrated run in my team last season, I bought players well above the ability levels of the players I had at a similar stage of my last ML career.

I should be achieving a lot more with this squad. Instead I’m plodding along in the bottom 8 of the table. It’ll all have to improve next season.

Feyenoord 1-0 Singers FC

This was actually the first-leg match of the D2 Cup Quarter Final - something I didn’t realise until after the match was over and the post-match calendar revealed the shocking truth. I’d just played one of the most important games of my season without knowing it. Er. Ooops?

Never mind. I’d still played as well as I could. I just couldn’t seem to get a break for the whole game. Feyenoord were in supercharged mode throughout. Despite this, I enjoyed the overwhelming share of possession - 75% at half time, 61% at full time. Possession counts for nothing on its own.

I’ll have to play really well in the second leg to advance to the semis. I want that trophy. If nothing else, it’d boost my club ranking and enable me to get some great players in the off-season. I’m going to need them in 2009.

Spartak Moscow 1-0 Singers FC

Back to the league. I had two players sent off. Bale was red-carded for a professional foul (naughty me, but no complaints). I reorganised my team, going to two up front and bringing on Ruskin for Leonardo. Then Ruskin was sent off for a typical PES2008 nothing-tackle. He’d been on the pitch for one minute.

D2 Cup Quarter Final 2nd leg:
Singers FC 3-0 Feyenoord (3-1 on aggregate)

(I knew it was the Cup this time.)

I made it. In truth, it was easy. Feyenoord were strangely subdued, or my lads were on fire, or both, or the Team Seabass script in the game’s dark heart was written in my favour, or all of these together were true, or none of them were true and I’m a fool, or, or - oh, who cares? I was happy.

Here are the goals:

I had Bale sent off again near the end. That boy’s getting himself a reputation. Referees are picking on him, I swear it.

Singers FC 0-2 Ajax

A post-Cup hangover saw my subdued, lightweight team get turned over with ease by the Dutch masters.

Singers FC 2-0 Marseille

Leonardo finally scored his first goal, a tap-in from six yards after a goalkeeper fumble. I’ll take it…

At last, it was time.

Time to start a new Master League career, with a new team, in a new league - and, eventually, with some strict House Rules.

Those House Rules will come in at the end of the first season. They’re needed to extend PES2008’s longevity. (Curse you Seabass!, etc.) I found that my first PES2008 Master League career was just so, so easy in the end. In my fifth and final season I was only seriously challenged on one or two occasions. I scored 136 goals in the League and won the Treble with ease. Usually I start a Master League career and just play that for the whole of the PES year. That is not an option this time around.

After spending most of the past week playing FIFA, I needed a warm-up match on PES2008. So I loaded up my first ML team, Coventry City, and had a few games.

After several days spent with the formidable simulation that is FIFA08 (nb: on the two next-gen consoles only), it was strange at first. PES2008 really deserves its faintly insulting description of arcadey.

I was soon back in the groove. After thumping Manchester United 5-0 with Schwarz and Shimizu et al, I decided that was enough warming up. On with the main event.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

I thought long and hard about playing another career with a team called Coventry City, using the same Sky Blue home kit and all-white away kit.

Those kits had a lot going for them. In five full seasons I never suffered a single instance of PES2008’s infamous kit-clashes.

I decided to go with a different team name and a different set of kits. Better to start completely afresh with another team and another set of kits.

When it came to the name, I decided to call my team after the original name of the real Coventry City Football Club. Thus my team is called - wait for it - SINGERS FC.

Yes, Singers FC.

The short version of the story is that Singers was the name of the football club that eventually became Coventry City. I kind of wish I’d gone with The Bantams now - that was CCFC’s nickname for three-quarters of a century until Jimmy Hill came along. But Singers FC it is and will remain. It still makes me wince slightly, but I am slowly getting used to it.

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After choosing my new team’s name, a new home and away kit was needed.

The home kit on the left was not intended to be a day-glo version of the Man Utd strip. I just sort of randomly played around with the buttons until I got a result that I liked (a bit like PES2008 itself, eh?)

The away kit on the right dazzled my mobile phone camera. It’s a kind of livid puke-green. It was intended to be as opposite from the home kit as possible.

I hate the kits. Both of them. I was too impatient to get started. I intend to change these kits at the first opportunity. I’ve already tried to change them in the top menu’s Edit mode, but the changes don’t appear in Master League. I’ll have to wait until after this first season is over. Feast your eyes on the abominations above, because they’re on show for one season only.

Let this be a lesson to all Master League aspirants: Set up in haste, repent at leisure.

THE SUPERLEAGUE

I did take a good deal of time and thought over the composition of the two Superleague divisions. Here they are:

Division 1 is self-explanatory: every top club in the game.

Choosing the teams for Division 2 was more problematic. I had to make it challenging, but not so tough that by the time I won promotion I would by default be good enough immediately to challenge for honours in Division 1. Have I got it right? With all of those ‘lesser’ Italian teams in there, I might have made it too demanding, and eventually I’ll go up to Division 1 more than ready for the big boys. Time will tell.

If nothing else it’ll be intriguing to see how the CPU teams fare against each other in these two divisions. Who will be promoted and relegated as the seasons start to pass?

I’ve already played the first 5 games of the season. I’ll post about them tomorrow.

My first game of the new Master League season was against Galatasaray, one of last season’s high-fliers.

I was playing at home, but - as happens around 7 times out of 10 when I play at home - the damn game forced me to play in my Away kit. Putting my team in its Away kit is actually the wrong decision by the game 90% of the time - at home and away grounds. My Coventry City team plays in an entirely sky blue kit - naturally - and there’d actually be no clash with any of the other teams’ kits. It’s just stupid.

I cannot believe that kit selection’s omission from all but Exhibition mode in PES2008 was anything other than a careless oversight. There are rumours that the forthcoming patch from Konami will be an attempt to fix lots of things about the game, not just the framerate. Here’s hoping for the rumours to have some truth to them - and, if so, for pre-game kit selection to make a welcome comeback in all modes

(The patch! Already there is more hope being placed in the forthcoming patch than there is in the Second Coming of Christ.)

Getting down off my soapbox and back to the game, things went a bit wrong even before kick-off when two of my six new faces turned up for match day with the dreaded blue arrows next to their names. Suzuki and Rommedahl were the culprits. No matter. I put Jaric in at DMF. Rommedahl wasn’t in the First XI anyway. I’d miss having him as a supersub, though.

I hope the match wasn’t a taste of things to come this season. I conceded a goal within the first 30 seconds. I tried to pass the ball out wide to Mao Molina, but it didn’t reach him. A Galatasaray player intercepted, zig-zagged his way right through my defence as if they were not even there, and scored.

I had a small amount of pressure but couldn’t keep the ball for long before the CPU team was attacking again. They scored just before halftime with a header from a corner. I am finding it very tough to defend ‘blind’ corners in PES2008. These are the corners that are taken from the far side of the pitch where you can’t see your six-yard box.

Goal number three for the Turks arrived midway through the second half. I was actually mounting some consistent pressure and carving out opportunities. I hit the post with a speculative long-range shot from De Ridder. I was enjoying the new freedom that the new players were bringing me. I could rely on being able to stop and turn with them without the CPU team automatically nipping in to take the ball away. Being only 0-2 down, I was really going for it.

Then the worst happened. And I meant the absolute worst - one of those quintessential PES moments that makes you groan.

Mao Molina received the ball on the left wing from Klavan. But something strange happened. Mao Molina didn’t collect the ball properly. It seemed to bounce back off his legs a few yards into space. Either I had tried to turn and run with the ball too quickly, or the game was modelling the fact that this was the first time both players had played together, or it was just some random effect.

So there was the ball rolling in open space midway between Klavan and Mao Molina. Klavan was best-placed to collect it, but I was still controlling Mao Molina. I pressed L1 to switch to Klavan, but I pressed a split-second after the cursor had already auto-switched to him… Meaning that I actually re-selected Mao Molina, and in the time all this faffing about was going on a Galatasary attacker scooped up the ball and raced clear toward my goal.

I brought out Zamenhof, but the CPU player took it around the keeper and slotted it home. 0-3. So much for the brave new world.