Disaster has struck. It’s not a fatal disaster, but it could well become one. I’m paying the natural and inevitable price for not yet being very good at PES2008. I’ve been in this kind of position before, but not for a long time. I hope I can remember how to get out of it. Let me explain.

In the season just gone—season 2010—I finished bottom of the league. I won only 2 games all season (again) and scored a paltry handful of goals.

The problem is that at the end of the previous season, anticipating success, I spent big in the transfer market. I took on too many players at too high a cost.

Now my salary bill is 8500 points. And I’ve got just 5400 points in the bank.

Anyone unfortunate or careless enough ever to find themselves in a similar position in Master League knows that there’s a GAME OVER screen with my name on it waiting for me at the end of this negotiation period if I don’t take drastic action.

I’ve only ever had a proper GAME OVER in PES once. It came way back in PES2. That was my first PES with a Master League and the whole concept was new to me. I unthinkingly blundered into disaster after my very first season. I overspent, couldn’t claw the money back, and it was all over. Even then I operated my strict policy of never reloading, of playing every game once and once only. Every outcome, on or off the field, was the only outcome there was allowed to be. I had to take the GAME OVER and start again.

And that’s what I’ll have to do this time as well, if I can’t avoid it.

First things first: playing the maximum number of pre-season friendlies. Winning a few of these would mean only losing one player, or even none at all if I won enough. I didn’t win any of them, though. I drew one and lost three. I’m no good at PES2008 right now. That’s why I’m in this position.

The other thing to do: put players on the transfer list en masse. Which is what I did. I was delighted after one negotiations week to see two CPU teams make bids for Ruskin. Great! But then I checked the bids.

I don’t know if this is a bug or what, but each of the three CPU teams had bid exactly 1 point for Ruskin. I was, and am, confused. If it’s a bug it’s a terrible one. But I can see how it might not be a bug. It could be a clever simulation of what might really happen—knowing that I’m a club in trouble, the other clubs take advantage by slyly offering to lighten my wages blll with nominal transfer fees. Releasing Ruskin would mean paying compensation.

I rejected all the CPU offers, hoping for a ‘proper’ transfer fee from elsewhere. Amazingly, all the remaining weeks passed without the CPU bidding for any of my players.

So then came the last week, and I had to do the toughest thing. I had to release a load of players in order to get my salary budget down. I released all of the below:

Elmander
Sibon
John
Ben Arfa
Ruskin
Batlles

They all hurt in their own way. Sibon was the easiest to let go; Batlles the hardest. All of them cost me between 20 and 100 points in compensation. At the end of the process I had a bank balance of around 5250 points, and a salary bill of around 5150 points.

So I had avoided the dreaded GAME OVER. But at what cost? My current squad is pictured on the left. It doesn’t look too healthy, does it? You don’t have to know PES to know that playing a busy, competitive football season with a bare-bones squad like that is going to be tough. Especially when you’re not really that good at the game to begin with.

I’ve spent nearly six months on this blog assuring the possibly-sceptical reader that I am an average player of PES. The ludicrous next-gen PES2008 seemed to give the lie to that statement. Now the solid, faithful last-gen version is proving its truth.

On the right, for what it’s worth, is my new First XI.

Park Jyun Hi comes in to replace the departed Elmander. I’ll keep Komol on the bench for now, but his time is coming. I’m toying with the idea of moving Podolski to the centre and slotting in Komol out there on the left, but I’ll see how the season goes first. Heck, I’ve got so few players that they’ll all play an equal number of games anyway, and they’ll all be permanently knackered to boot.

I’ve played a Master League season with a preposterously small squad before. The last time I remember this happening to me was in PES4. The difference then was that I was already good at the game and was able to work my squad back towards rude health within half a season. I’m not giving up on this career before the season has even begun—if anything this makes life more interesting. But I’ll have to get good at last-gen PES2008, fast.

Here’s something I’ve never done before. I’m going to dispose of most of a season in one post. The Division 2 season on the PSP/PS2 version is so short that I played through most of the season 2010 games all in one night. It wasn’t pretty.

I’m resorting to this because the rest of season 2010 after week 4 was just like season 2009: short and brutal. I played another 10 games and won just 1 of them. I drew 3. And I lost 6. Which gave me a not-so-grand end-of-season record that looked like this:

Played: 14. Won: 2. Drew: 3. Lost:9. Goals Scored: 10. Goals Against: 27

Final Position: 8th (resoundingly bottom of the table)

My disciplinary record was pretty poor as well. A dozen or so yellows and about seven reds. I continued my tradition—that I’ve apparently brought over from next-gen PES2008—of allowing one red card in a match to lead to several more in the same match. On the PS3 version I had loads of games completely abandoned because of this bad habit. I never had one of these PSP/PS2 games abandoned, but I came close.

My most common scoreline in all of the defeats was 0-2, for some reason. This actually gives me some grounds to hope. I was conceding 3 or 4 goals per game in past seasons. Things are moving in the right direction (at a glacier-like pace, admittedly).

The Division 2 Cup might as well not have happened. I got the feeling that I was amusing the CPU team just by turning up.

I made no transfers in the mid-season negotiations—nobody in, nobody out. I spent the restof the season alternately losing, and cursing, and scoring occasional goals, and acquiring vain and utterly unrealistic hopes of ’snatching promotion’ (as I bizarrely kept telling myself even when it was mathematically impossible).

My players frustrated me by playing well enough for me to see how good they are and how great I should be playing with them—but still badly enough to let goals in at one end and singularly fail to score them at the other. I discovered that Camacho is perhaps more effective as a DMF than as an AMF; that Komol is worthy of a permanent spot in the First XI; and Maldini is seriously taking his time to mature and stop being such a slow, clumsy prima donna. Tsk.

And this brings us bang up to date.

In week 1 of Negotations before season 2011 I have a huge problem. During season 2010 I only amassed 5000 points, and my salary bill is currently 9000 points.

Something’s got to give.

On Monday I’ll be speaking in full about this very intriguing pre-season 2011 Negotiation period. I’ll say this much now: season 2011 will be the most challenging season I have ever faced in any Master League in all my long years of playing this game.

Delicate negotiations.

If I misjudge these and have another bad season like the one I’ve just finished (Played 14; Won 2; Drew 2; Lost 10), I could be risking a Game Over. Or worse.

I have dim memories—going way back now—of having to release players en masse in order to trim an ML salary bill down to its bare bones and avoid a Game Over. As it happened I turned that ML around, I think (it was PES4 or somesuch—I don’t properly recall), but I’d hate to have to try the same here.

The question is, do I want to go all-in and get as many good or great players as possible, and gamble that I’ll ‘click’ with the game this coming season—or should I just play it safe, make sure that I can pay the bills at season’s end, and let the games take care of themselves?

A compromise position, somewhere in-between, is what I went for.

Burchet’s contract was up for renewal. I didn’t renew it. I let him go. Usually that’s something I hate to do. Even the most mediocre player can be useful as trade-in fodder.

I thought I needed a dedicated left-sided AMF. Yamada just wasn’t doing it for me. I searched and found Nakamura available for a couple of thousand points. I couldn’t really afford it but I went for him anyway.

I also picked up an old friend, Chiesa, from the Youth list. I just can’t bring myself to call it the Rookie list. It’s the same distaste that makes me wince whenever I get to the Strip Selection stage, pre-game, and see that it’s called Uniform Selection. It’s just not right…

I also got a striker—yet another one; I’ve got far too many, really—called Sibon, who seems pretty poor stats-wise but has immense height and strength. If I have to muscle my way to a few results that’s what I’ll do.

Nakamura comes straight in on the left. I’m hoping his free kick ability will get goals. Yamada goes to the bench for now. I’m sticking with Handanovic as goalkeeper. His abilities are solid across the board. Lehmann is still a youngster and I can’t afford a rookie’s mistakes between the posts while I’m struggling. Maldini & co. are now 20+ years old, so they have fewer excuses. Must do better, lads.

All of which wheeler-dealering took my points tally down to just 1000-odd after paying the salary bill. That’s a little lower than I intended. I think I’ve just made most of this season 2010’s games do-or-die games…