Taking Sides: Championship Manager 4 vs Having A Social Life

I got very emotional when we drew away with Juventus. Fantastic result.

Ironically enough, the game of Champ I was most pleased with was when I won 15 titles in 4 seasons with those reknowned world beaters Total Network Solutions of Wales.

What romance then when having guided my boys through many a cold night in Windsor Park I found myself at the European Championships playing Italy, and 33 year old Neil Lennon scored the goal that won the day for the North and settled a score with my brother and managerial rival.

oh god I wish I had the new one.

I found the PSOne LMA Manager absolutely impossible, I lost every single game no matter what.

Dom Passantino's top 5 Commodore 64 Football Management Games

5. Treble Champions
4. Kenny Dalgleish's European Football Manager
3. Football Manager 2
2. Tracksuit Manager
1. Multi Player Soccer Manager

I've got lma2002 for the ps2 and it's really good but nowhere near champman, but, like Tom says it's far less intense and doesn't take over your life. I won the French league with Auxerre with it with Cisse scoring something like 50 goals.

Lynskey, that is a genius idea, Premier manager for ps2 has you "chatting" to members of your team and you guage their morale by their facial expressions, it got terrible reviews though.

I may dig out champ man 2001 this weekend

Did anyone else edit the commentary in the old one? You could go to the file and change it so he'd say "a great little arrive from the little fella" or "tell you what clive, that was a fantasy pass from nicky butt". Of course I hadn't heard Ronglish back then but I'd do that now for sure.

PS; Dom, am I correct in thinking you live in Northampton? If so, I went to uni there many moons ago and am returning on May Day weekend if you fancy meeting for a pink in the Charles Bradlaugh?

Nick... Mayday? That'd be May 1st, wouldn't it? I'll probably be back at uni then, around 180 miles from Northampton. I'll let you know nearer the time, though.

Not that it matters, as it WON'T FUCKING WORK ON MY COMPUTER. It keeps teeling me wheile I'm picking which team to be, setting my name etc. that it can't verify that I'm using an official CD and closes the program down. I want to cry.

My finest previous CM moment - Savo Milosevic scoring 94 (ninety-four) goals in one season as Lazio won the quadruple. Heady days.

I once stayed with my brother for a few days - not sure if it was Championship Mgr, Premiership Mgr or whatever that he had, but it was one of those. I barely spoke to anyone for 3 days, stayed up til 6am every night and didn't leave his flat. Stopped to eat, piss and shit, that's about it. It was fantastic.

Post your favourite tactics here so I can crib them later!

and best buys you ever made in 2001/2 please!

Of course, I had to be Everton, fast-tracking Rooney and Hibbert into the first-team, buying a disgruntled Bernarbia from Man City and an unsettled Bogarde from Chelsea, sticking big Dunc and Gazza on the transfer list, encouraging Radzinski to work on his shooting, scouting out the Swedish leagues for bargains. It was all going so well - conceding an appalling number of goals, but Alexandersson a revelation out on the right, Idan Tal a fine deputy for Bernarbia and comfortably in 8th come the end of January (no Cup runs though).

Then I had a run of seven defeats and a draw in eight games (including a match at Newcastle where we were 6-0 down in 35 minutes and a Goodison derby defeat - Henchoz header) and I lost heart. I might resign next time I start it up.

2 people I know are/were in Champ - Seth Johnson who I was at primary school with and who obv.plays for Leeds (or whoever), and Geoff Breslan who used to play for Exeter City who I was at senior school with.

<reads the Fat Girls and Feeders thread>

No, this is still the most terrifying thread.

I am currently Woking. I shall be Torquay in the game I'm about to start with my friend Harry. He should be Cardiff - he has been every time we've played on the several earlier incarnations - but they're not in the same division any more, sob.

Are there any ILX girls playing, as a matter of interest?

(p.s. Chris, Vicky didn't seem *that* anti when I was chatting with her yesterday... ;)

On 01/02, my all-time favourite buy... probably Paul Weller. At... Burnley, in real life, isn't he? He was wasting away in the Norwich reserves when I got him for around £40,000. Anyway, he comes in, we were angling for a run at the play offs... averages 8.6 something, scores 20 FROM MIDFIELD, and we cruise to the division title. We sell him for £2 million to Blackburn, where he then averages 6.42 for the season.

Truly beautiful.

Mark- women don't "Champ". Hasn't Championship Manager been cited in 63 divorce cases in the UK?

Also I believe there is someone in the Galatasaray reserves called Stephen Pastel.

Champ is just dangerous. It should be licensed like guns.

(I know the guy who does the research for Ayr United, he's in my class, he gets a free copy of the game.)

And I know someone in Champ: Lee Duncan from Albion Rovers. I'm so tempted to buy this tomorrow. What are the minimum system specs?

I'm about to start a game of 00/01 with Betis in a minute, wish me luck

Best game - successive season promotions with Cheltenham Town from the Third to the Premier (01/02) - resigned following board wrangling, then went on to repeat the trick with Bristol Rovers. Then the game went funny and nuked everything.

But that Cheltenham side rocked bells. Simon Royce between the sticks, Daniel van Buyten and Ivan Hurtado (with backup from Richard Rufus) holding it down in defence, Nicolas Savinaud, Daniel Fahrenholz, and the left-footed legend that IS Landry Zahana-Oni bossing the midfield, then upfront the four-legged goal machine - Dave Kitson and Ivan Kaviedes. Memories, man, memories...

Currently got no money so I'm on the demo version, but it is still pretty sweet. Not yet had the balls to take a lower-division side anywhere, but the Southampton game I was running was magic till I hit the time limit. Currently with Newcastle, who are shit in the League, but just beat Lens 7-0 in the Champions League, with hat-tricks for Bellamy and Ameobi. Watching us pass the French Champions to bits on the 2D screen is so damnably fine...

Barry Town are the first team to get the Dom Passantino treatment on the new game... S'going well. Top, halfway through the season, got murdered in the Champions League qualifiers, though. Plus ca change.

First impressions -

Matches a load better, the top down view definitely adds a lot. Commentary doesn't seem to be greatly improved though. The highlights option is a good way to whizz through matches without being too blase about it. The training bit is confusing me a bit. Anyone tweaked this in a noticeably useful way yet? Overall, it looks nice and fizzy and the tactics bit is a bit more logical to use.

How are we all doing then?

I'm about to start season 3 with Liverpool using RANDOM PLAYERS. Fear my scary parallel universe.

As far as the randomness goes - it is possible to tell who some players have been randomised from - eg. I had a hulking, ineffective forward that meant well who spent his early years at Leicester. Unlike Heskey, however, he was Ukranian and needed a work permit. The door's that way, fatlad.

Second in first season, as Arsenal did another double, happilly watching a Man U midseason collapse that left them fourth come May.

The second season brought league success, mostly due to another horrific slump by Man U, and also one by Arsenal. Blackburn were topping the table for a long time, but a hard fought victory at Ewood Park with 4 games to go took care of that.

The close season has brought in Mustafa Serdar from Blackburn (haha - I've nicked your best striker), to finally give me something to partner goal-god Petr Vecera up front, although I'm bringing up a couple of promising youngsters up too. I've got immense trouble with Irish wing-god Alan Keane, who wants out and wants out bad (why? we're the Champions!), but he was only 4mil from Spurs and now I've got the cream of European football chasing his signature for plenty pounds. Hopefully life-long Liverpool fan and England winger Jack Baker will be allowed to move from Blackburn (buy the competiton!) to fill his shoes.

This is going to drive me insane, isn't it?

Also is my suspicion that the Italian league is extremely tough for away games accurate? I was thinking of setting up a special style for away matches.

Ok has anyone else had a saved game fuck up for them thus losing all their precious achievements.

the year is 2004, Ronan has guided Real Sociedad to a 4th position followed by 3rd place and a UEFA Cup win, the directors are over the moon, the fans are over the moon, Nihat and Kovacevic are hammering in the goals, Dani's career has been resurrected by my faith in his skills, Phillipe Christanval is marshalling the defence.

AND NOW MY FUCKING GAME WON'T LOAD!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Is there any way to fix this? I didn't turn off my comp while saving or any such thing?

Try scandisking and defragging your hard drive Ronan, that worked for me on a couple of occasions. It's more likely that you're fucked, though.

I PLAYED THIS ALL WEEK, HAVE YOU NO MERCY GOD?

Mark - patches have been made by Wombles to transform the Conference into the CCL, and to add the right player names to the AFC side.

I am also in a background on this game. It is very freaky to think that millions of men around the world have been staring at me.

hahaha! Matt, I kiss you! (platonically, of course, this is a football thread)

I am still with Norwich. So mid-table it hurts. David Nielsen is seemingly my only decent (and loyal) player.

Euro Qualifiers are upon me, there are injuries galore, but hey, I don't mind, for once England has a shit hot left-sided midfielder. Left back is a distinct problem though. Morally as well as practically, as all the best defenders seem to play for Everton. We're spoilt for nearly-but-not-quite-international-level strikers too. Very mid-eighties.

I'm still juggling the Liverpool job, which is no hassle now as my early tactic of buying as many talented youngsters as possible has paid off (we've won 3 reserve championchips in a row with them). Said goal-god Petr Vecera has an equally good partner out of the youth ranks in Alan Marshall and I'm enjoyng that ultimate of Champ Man joys, having a young Swede that cost 400k absolutely ripping apart anything in his path (and he's AM/F L/R/C).

This season is slightly wierd, Man U and Arsenal have never really got it together since the game started, leaving Newcastle (top imports, said England left wing genius) and Fulham (demon strikeforce, solid journeymen) as my two biggest rivals. We're currently locked in a 3 way battle for the top at Christmas time. Blackburn have finally had ALL their decent players nicked and have collapsed, Leeds and Villa have gone entirely pear-shaped and out of the Prem forever, West Brom are now solid Euro contenders. And poor promoted Stockport are getting tonked week in week out at the foot of the table.

One thing I can't do at all is cups. We've been shit in all of them, most annoyingly Europe. If we don't get at least to the semi's of the Champions League this season I'll go to a Serie A club, or at least one that isn't involved in the utter domino chain bankruptcy crisis that has consumed the continent. Even Real have fallen.

Right, I'm scaring myself. I probably know more about this soul-less database than the real world. I'm going for a walk.

It's a real pain the way you can't buy non-Basque players with Sociedad, screw their realism.

Anyway - I'm Hull. First season was, quite frankly, bizarre. We win something like our first 23 league games, conceding about 6 goals in the process. Stewie Elliott is on fire and walloping them in like nobody's business regardless of which lower league clogger (Tom Youngs, Lawrie Dudfield, Jamie Forrester) he's put up front with, as D3 defences take about three quarters of the season to figure out Hull's fiendishly clever 'run to the edge of the six-yard-box then square it for for the pish-easy tap in' tactic. Then things get even odder with the acquisition of unknown Icelandic youngster Johann Porhallson for £16K from Por, who turns out to be astonishingly unstoppable and great, getting a hat-trick one game, then five goals the next, and then another hat-trick the game after that. Coupled with the incredibly fluky free transfer signings of Mr Consistency himself, Tijjani Babangida, and Honduran playmaker par excellence Amado Guevara, as well as the hardcase rotating defensive midfield/centre back triad of Ashbee, Anderson and Ruhanen, awkwardly converted left winger Richie Appleby, and already hyper solid Hull defence (Fettis, Edwards/Regan, Whittle, Strong/Delaney, Holt) and Hull romp it, taking the league title with ten games to spare.

Then it gets even odder. Because Hull decide to have an FA cup run as well, squeaking out a replay win against West Ham in the third round, then tonking Leicester 3-0 in round four, smashing plucky underdogs Canvey Island 7-0 in round five, beating Liverpool 2-0 in round six, then taking the semi-final 3-0 against Blackburn, leaving the big, fat, smelly David and Goliath of a match-up against Man Utd in the final.

Elliott and Porhallson both pocket one in the first half, before some bastard, probably Paul Scholes, decides to kick Johann's leg in and put him out of action for four months. Elliott's blood rises and he goes and wallops another one in, leaving Hull 3-0 up but utterly knackered. United, never ones to miss an opportunity to be complete bastards, come tearing back. Greg Strong's concrete donkey instincts kick in and he gifts them a free kick on the edge of the box, which Veron duly hammers in. Two minutes later and a cross comes in and there's Ming The Merciless to nab his second with five minutes to go. Somehow, though, the Tigers pull it together and close out the game to take it 3-2, winning Hull the league and cup double for the first time in, like, ever. The Humber explodes with joy as they also get the added benefit of European football for the first time in ages, and the council gets ready to welcome Skonto Riga or whoever it is.

The first team squad decides to repay me by becoming disillusioned, injured or just plain rubbish overnight. True, the bizarre free transfer signings of Chris Llewellyn and Haruna Babangida don't exactly help matters, nor does the fact that no-one wants to bloody buy Shaun Smith or Jamie Forrester or loan any of the youngsters even though Oxford are saying they're really interested in Steve Burton, hmm, yeah, maybe. Close season goes OK, though, and the first couple of league games are a doddle. However, without the first choice strike force (Elliott does his groin in), we're left relying on young Shane Tudor for goals, and he lacks the sparkle to make Youngs and Dudfield look anything other than the distinctly third division talents that they are. We lose the Charity Shield 3-2 to bloody Man Utd (still, at least we fucked up their double), and then lose the following game 2-1, that being the away leg of our UEFA Cup opener against Red Star Belgrade. Tijjani does score an utter beauty, running past their entire defence then slotting it under the keeper, but then again he has to cos god knows Chris Llewellyn can't. Then, however, we lose 1-0 to Bradford, prompting a severe look at our attacking options. Despite having ten strikers, we get in Fulham's Bermudan wunderkind Elvis Hammond on loan as well, and he repays us with a goal in his first game, a rubbish 1-1 draw at Barnsley. As things stand, we look crushed till Elliott and Johann come back, set for an early UEFA exit... and I wouldn't be backing us too heavily in the league this season either. Still, that's football, innit.

Big story of the match was the attack, though, as Tom Youngs turns in arguably his best ever performance up front with Tijjani (pairing made after some, hem hem, advice from the assistant manager), running around and opening up chances all over. On the hour Youngs gets free on the left hand side of the box - Tijjani's open! Tommo knocks in a perfect cross, but possibly because his feet are stuck, or possibly in vengeance for all the beautiful crosses of his that Youngs has made a mess of in the past, Babangida takes about half an hour to turn for the shot, by which time Red Star's keeper has got his bearings and plucks it from the Nigerian's feet. We don't get another chance of that quality, a rather desperate snap shot from about thirty yards out on the right wing from Haruna going wide with ten minutes left being the best of the rest, and the road to the San Siro is diverted via Mansfield. Bugger.

I am 3rd after 12 games, I think I've a better squad this time around. I will conquer all. It was horrible starting again and having the fans all neutral but now they are delighted again. Nihat, Kovacevic and previously unknown Columbian Lleidar are terrorising the defences, the highlight being a 5-1 pounding of Valencia.

I thought I was over the CM4 obsession, I had this game for ages before getting to this stage. Ah well.

cm4 is fucking riddled with bugs though.

Personally I can't fucking wait for the new Pro Evolution Game, I'm ready to live and love all over again.

(my friends are all away, some are busy and drifting away, others are coming back, nightclub is closed, very quiet life lately unless i go into the city)

I take that as code for "they've fixed all the flaws and it's fucking total dork realism for old skool iss headz"

still playing that version.

I'm in 2010 at the moment and unemployed after winning premiership titles and guiding PSV to a champions league glory.

I love when players do awesome things like headbutt several of the opposing team before being sent for a shameful early bath.

Would I be better with ProEvolution though? I used to play CM back in the day, but it's been a while so I might prefer something else. Help me!

The *real* CM5 will be Football Manager 04/05. Which I haven't played the demo of yet.

god 01/02 is good.

striker recc. for 01/02 = "Baha".

Funny how these things happen. I've just sold my star player (Anthony La Tallec) for £40 million to Chelsea, but then made up ground by buying Obafemi Martins for £17 million. Weird watching the average age of all the teams slowly creep higher and higher...

(God this really is the best thread ever. Ronan and Dom were on fire)

Arsenal have finally collapsed, going down last season, Spurs spent about 60 mil in 2 years on the worlds best then got relegated (they've bounced back now), Man U seem to have a phobia of buying any decent players and seem to exist of bringing through youth team lads who are distinctly *meh* and ensure them 5th each season. The main rivals are Newcastle and Middlesbrough and strangely theres a south-coast boom where both Plymouth and Brighton are in the Prem.

The people behind the other CM games will have their own game(the real CM5) out before xmas.

It's better than previous CMage although it feels like a bit of a trial run for the next version. The tactics side of it is infinitely more varied and better - you can outfox better teams with a little thought like some sort of crazed armchair Benitez. My only major gripes with it are that the distinctly average players seem to play better for your team than others and it's too easy to pick up really good players on free transfers.

What's really made the game worse this time round though is real life - the Premiership is terribly frustrating to play as Chelsea will buy the worlds top 3 players every single year, Arsenal will be world beaters even with rubbish players, Man U ditto. Getting a Newcastle, Spurs or whoever to the title is nigh on impossible. The lower leagues are the place to be.

The pictures the game uses for the made-up future players are the best part of this one by a mile - How could you not sign this guy -

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/lynskey/avatar.jpg

We finished third in the end, we could have finished second if we'd have beaten Milan on the last day of the season but they came from 2-1 down to win 3-2. Considering our defence consists of a nearly dead Igor Tudor, the perennially overrated Nicola Legrottiale, and some assorted detritus that came with the club as I took over (and has been with them since they were in Serie C by the looks of it), I think I can be proud.

Best signing: Frode Johnsen from Rosenborg under the Bosman. 7.92 average rating for a 33 year old winger. He was the replacement for Fabio Grosso. Why is it so hard to find a good goalkeeper?

my inability to get past anything that happened post 2002 is perhaps best demonstrated in my compulsion to continually return to this game, buy the same players, use the same tactics and coast to titles. Is it a zen thing?

i think it might be except i like the crawling up a thousand stone steps on yr knees route to enlightenment

idk starting with ziege, poyet, sheringham and anderton all in your first xi and each on 30k a week, there's gotta be an element of redemption in repeating that over and over

can't remember how fat Anderton was in 2002

chunky like a biscuit yorkie, more easily broken iirc