Reviews// Football Manager 2007 (PS2/PC/360/Mac)

Early decisions made about yourself will affect the way your career develops. The hardcore will – or bloody well should – start out as a 25-year old, journeymen player from the lower leagues whose favourite club is, for example, Exeter City. Not only will these choices make the game more difficult to conquer, but each trait: from your callow years, via your past experience (an addition in FM2007), right up to your love of Exeter will define how others within the game see and relate to you.

Like any great ‘life-simulation’ it’s these smidgeons at the start that can have immense impact later in the game. You have got to keep your eye even more firmly on the task in hand with FM2007 than before.

A quick aside at this point: if you’re brand new to the genre, getting started is a daunting experience. Although the interface could be held up in many a design class as a paradigm for presenting complex concepts cleanly and with minimum clutter, the sub-tree upon tree upon sub-tree of choice and task which it overlays demand your concentration.

Once you’re in, however, you quickly become acquainted with the fact that FM2007, like top-flight football itself, is as much to do with the management of psychologies as it is to do with catenaccio, diamond formations and the player ‘bonding’ down at Rumours Nite Spot on the high street.

FM2007 provides even more ways for you to become entangled off the pitch. Take, for example, the basic act of signing a player. Okay, in previous versions, the cut and thrust of the transfer market came down to cash-money and who had the more grapefruit-sized cojones. The latest version introduces the concept of ‘feeder clubs’, advice from your own players (and it might come as a shock to an idiot, but some players can be less than honest in their appraisals of others), and a more targeted way of placing your scouts.

While all of these additional techniques can enable you to strengthen your squad, they can also lead you up the path of losing focus on the lads you’ve already got – and that path leads to relegation, disgrace and a stint with Bristol City.

Bear in mind that FM2007 is aimed directly, in this reviewer’s mind, at fracturing that focus at every turn. Although we avoid clichés like the plague, it has to be said that you must keep your eyes on the ball.

All this talk of psychology, politics (the boardroom takeover addition is simply great as it hits you from nowhere if you’re not totally across the news), could, in a weaker game, lead to an imbalance on the tactical side of actual play. Fear not. That aspect wasn’t broke, so has not been fixed. The nitty-gritty of setting your charges up to best exploit that young right-back or old sweeper maintains itself in all its previous frustrating, self-aggrandising glory.

In short, FM2007 - taken in early doses - is an achievement of, as ever, monumental proportions. The best things that can be said of it are: that what it did well before, it continues to do so; the additions do not detract.

SPOnG Score: B++ (but come back for updates)

[i]Football Manager 2007 maintains itself in the same way as the Real Madrid dynasty of the late 1950s. Immersive, compulsive and great. If you are new to the genre, it can ease you in. If you are an old hand, it will confront, reward and frustrate. The additions make it new, while the gameplay retains pedigree. But, it’s early days…[/i]