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.

I’m still in a mood with PES2008 on the PS3 and have not played it since last week. I might never play it again. I absolutely hate it. I loathe it, in a way that I’ve rarely loathed any computer game, including the old FIFAs. Just the thought of playing so-called next-gen PES2008 again makes me feel dizzy with displeasure.

That mood is not helped by the arrival of the comparatively excellent PSP version. This version, although ‘last-gen’, strikes me as being quintessentially PES-like. It’s true to its roots. The ‘next-gen’ version is… well, I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t PES.

I’ve been entranced by the PSP version over the weekend. After playing my usual test games against Scotland and Germany, I skipped the customary warm-up tournament and jumped straight into a Master League career.

Naturally, I started my new Master League with the Default players on Top Player. My players are terrible and I’m finding the difficulty to be formidable. Am I some kind of masochist? What possessed me to start ML with the Default players again? On Top Player? Sheesh.

The scripting in this last-gen version of the game seems, if anything, more overt and more annoying than the next-gen one. All versions of the game over the past few years have featured a phenomenon I will call CCOP, or CPU Continuity of Possession.

This is where the CPU will maintain possession in and around your penalty area no matter how heroically you defend, no matter how many blocking tackles you make, no matter how clearly it seems that you’ve finally cleared the ball and/or won back possession. The CPU will always get the ball back immediately and keep the little spell of pressure going and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In Master League the length of time the CPU can get away with this is relative to the quality of your players and the difficulty level. (And, allegedly, how good you are at the game…)

At least I’m playing as Coventry City again in a Master League that I enjoy. Being in a second division with just 12 teams again is also very fine. The first transfer window rolls around just when you’re starting to get bored with losing 0-1 to goals conceded in the last five minutes. I got Camacho again. And I just signed Podolski in the end-of-season window. Whoo-hoo, etc.

PSP loading times are less annoying that before, but they’re still annoying. The most annoying blank screens are the ones that come during a match when the game takes an infuriating time to load a yellow card or a substitution cut-scene, or even just a free kick scenario.

Why don’t they simply remove all of the cut-scenes for the PSP versions of this game? Watching your own distorted reflection in the blank screen (is that really me) and listening to the UMD drive grinding away for several seconds is not what I signed up for here. Yes, it is only several seconds each time, and it is less than in previous PSP versions of the game, but they all still add up.

Over the course of a game with 5 bookings, say, and a couple of injuries, you’re looking at a total of a few minutes of time wasted loading up (IMO) redundant cut scenes. Just drop them completely next year. No one’ll miss them.

And then getting back to the main menu after completing a game takes a grand total of 80 seconds each time (I counted). Grrrr.

It should be borne in mind here that my PSP is a launch-day model from 2005. I understand that the latest PSPs feature improved UMD drives with much better loading times. Despite all of this signature moaning from me, the loading times for PES2008 on the PSP are still a lot better than before and not an issue for me right now.

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Now I’m faced with a dilemma regarding this blog.

Do I make the leap to the PSP version permanently, or do I go back and give the PS3 version another chance?

I hate the PS3 version now—make no mistake about it: I HATE THE PS3 VERSION OF PES2008.

But I can’t imagine myself blogging long-term about the PSP version—not unless I also get the PS2 version to complement it, and transfer my Master League career back and forth to…

Decisions, decisions.

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…