Match days have been rendered more straightforward with a "match flow" function that steers you through all the stages of getting ready for each match - from selecting your team to giving a team talk and checking out the opposition's tactics, and also more realistic with a new substitution system that forces players to make real-time changes via a tactical screen while the game continues. The menu systems have also been moved around and tweaked to make them ultimately more accessible, though veteran players will need a while to get used to them. Lengthy consultations with usability experts led to the dark green and grey skins being replaced with a far simpler and brighter white and black look that is more than a touch reminiscent of iTunes. The latest edition boasts range of new features and, more controversially for fans of the series, a radically overhauled look. "It's always funny when you see obscure players turning up at clubs and you say 'do you reckon these guys have been playing FM?' But managers use it too - Jerzy Engel, (Poland boss from 2000-02) said playing our game was the best way for a young manager to learn how to manage a team." We're very proud of it," continues Jacobson. Indeed, SI's scouting network - over 1,500 strong - is so good that professional scouts have owned up to using their database when looking for players Jacobson even claims some of the games scouts have been signed by Champions League sides, though he refuses to give out names. Statistically far and away the most detailed game on the market, boasting over 50 countries' domestic leagues and an impossibly vast database of players, FM 2008 boasts enough statistics and minutiae to keep a hardcore fan entertained for hours before they even get around to playing a match. Perhaps, but it's not hard to see how any football fan could become immersed in Football Manager.
"Which is slightly worrying, but if people want to escape into this other world then there's maybe something wrong with the world they're living in already?" "According to Men's Health magazine a couple of years ago we were cited in 35 divorce cases in one year," sighs Sports Interactive's managing director Miles Jacobson. Rivals may claim glitzier graphics or funkier in-game sequences, but, 15 years on from its first conception (then as Championship Manager) in 1992, no other management simulator can match the FM series for sheer, life-wrecking addictiveness.
Step aside, pretenders to the crown, Football Manager has returned.
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