Take a look at the two goals below.

Who scored them? Was it Castolo? Ordaz? Guiterrez? Diego bleedin’ Maradona at his peak?

Nope. It was Ruskin who scored them - and in the same match to boot. Ruskin. He got both of them with his right foot as well. Yes, that’s the default left-back, RUSKIN. The player who can barely muster an arthritic shuffle to intercept yet another CPU winger bombing down on my goal.

First is a long-range shot from distance after a good set-up pass from Macco. I’d have been proud and happy to score that one with Ronaldinho or Gerrard a few seasons hence. But with Ruskin? In my first season? The world has turned on its head.

Not happy with scoring what would probably have been my Goal of the Season, Ruskin thought he’d go one better.

Later on in the same game, I’m 1-2 down and looking for an equaliser. I’m using my ultra-attacking 1-2-3-3 formation (mapped to a strategy button) to get some pressure going. Ximelez, shoved over to the right, does some good work down the wing (for once in his miserable life), checks back onto his left foot, and floats the ball over to the other side…

And there is Super Ruskin once again, lurking just outside the box to dispatch a first-time volley high into the top corner of the net. One of the most picturesque picture-book goals I have ever scored on any ISS/PES game. My gast was indeed truly flabbered.

I actually lost this game 2-3. I’m now looking goggle-eyed at the foot of Division 2, and seeing Coventry City headed that way. This first season will not end well for me. Derby County just phoned me up from the real world to laugh at me. But what the heck. I’ve scored two unforgettable crackers.

Ruskin?

After twenty minutes spent editing all the English league team names, I turned my attention to PES United. Every year this is the team I take over and play my Master League career with. I always change their name to that of my home-town club - Coventry City - and edit the kit to the traditional (and world-famous) Sky Blue colour.

I was concerned that PES2008’s trimmed-down Edit mode wouldn’t let me do what I needed to do. But it was fine. Yes, it’s a poor Edit mode this year. I feel a lot of sympathy for fans who love nothing more than to spend hours tinkering with players and kits and boots and logos and whatnot. But the bare-bones Edit mode happens to be adequate for my modest needs.

The only thing I usually do that I couldn’t do this time was add a shirt logo. At the moment I cannot be bothered messing around with EyeCams or whatever it is I need to use to transfer images into the game. I would have liked simply to add some text and use that as a logo, but even that function is denied. Curse you Seabass!

I zipped through the Master League setup screens, impatient to finally get going. I chose Top Player difficulty with 10 minute matches, and I selected the Teamgeist ball to play with. When it came to choosing the transfer market levels, I went with Normal for everything.

And so to the formation screen.

I was interested to see some additions to the Default squad players. As well as the usual and expected Ivarov, Ruskin, Minanda, and Castolo et al, there’s a handful of new faces. Baumann, El Moubarki, Van den Berg, Ettori. They’re all around the 20-years-old mark. I think they’ve been added not just to bulk out a seriously stamina-challenged squad, but to provide you with some youngsters to develop over a few seasons. Ordinarily you can’t get rid of the Default players fast enough (I’m looking at you, Ximelez). If you still have any of them in your squad after a few seasons, you’re not doing things right. But this crop of new players looks promising - especially Van den Berg. I’ll be keeping a fond eye on all of them.

As ever, the main formation has got to be a 4-3-3. And, again as ever, setting up an initial First XI is a matter of choosing the best of a pretty bad bunch. Here’s the formation and selection I started with:

I know. With these players, it’s a formation that cries out: Attack me! But I have found that I cannot play with any other style of formation. Playing with two up front just feels wrong. With a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2 I can never seem to make things happen. It’s 4-3-3 or bust for me. (I do kind of cheat on this a little by having two alternate formations assigned to strategy buttons, and I use them on the fly in the midst of games. But they’re very special alternate formations, and I use them in a peculiar way.)

I put all the defenders’ and the DMF’s defensive arrows on full. I set up a couple of attacking runs for the AMFs and CFs. (They haven’t worked out too well and I’m chopping and changing them from game to game.)

Then I was ready to play. I had chosen to play in Division 2 of League B, after a few minutes’ confusion over just which League had all the English clubs in its Division 1. After messing around for a while I finally just swapped out the entire Division 1 of League B for all the English clubs. This way, when I get promoted, I’ll be taking part in a virtual English Premiership. That’s the way I like it. However, I did not change any of the clubs in Division 2. Consequently I find myself playing in a real mish-mash of a league. Celtic and Rangers are there. Galatasaray are there. Rosenborg are there. River Plate are there. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Never mind.

I forget now who I played in the first game. Whoever it was, they were all over me. I was cursing the Default players’ treacle-slow movements and response times. I viciously cursed their oil-tanker-like turning circles. I went 0-1 down. Then, somehow, I scored my first goal. Nothing special, really. But the first cut is the sweetest, or something.

The game ended in a 1-1 draw. Overall I was much happier with the Default players than I have been at the start of Master League in the last few PESes. This year they seem more resilient and more capable on the ball, relatively speaking.

I got a shock when it was time to choose my team for the next game. Barely any of the First XI had more than half their stamina left. It’s going to be a long, hard season.