1st Division Manager

A few original ideas here, in terms of the tactics you can instruct your team to follow, with things like the team talk and 'hatchet man' idea.

Sadly, the design is incredibly unfriendly, especially for a game seemingly aimed at a young audience, with horrendously clunky menus with lengthy redraw times - not to mention incredibly vague instructions, which could be describing almost any football management game.

What's more, there's a lack of any real information about your players on the main squad screen, meaning extra clicks (or on the training screen, which can only be entered once a week, meaning you need to learn the skills of your players (especially the fictional ones) quickly, or their training time will go to waste), and an awkward method of finding and signing players.

Matches play out okay, but each option (or the naff, needless cinematic manager graphics) means a loading delay, and the highlights are completely 2D, with the ball never leaving the ground even if the text calls the shot as a 'chip'. Big concerns over the realism of the results too, with too many home wins (though you definitely can win games). Leave a suspended player in your starting line-up and you play with 10 men!

Far too much wrong with this for it to even be a good budget buy. Completely different from the 8-bit title of the same name, despite the quote from Crash! On the box, and not licensed by the recognisable people drawn on the box - who all licensed games for other companies.

Game could be ok BUT you will never ever win league matches. I had a team 9/9 all win all non important game, lead the board and finished #1 but still lost every single league matches no matter what. At the end I edited all players to 10/10 and used winuae quick save/load to try different approach: setup (4-2-4/4-3-3 etc) all different advice etc. Nope you can't win. You can be #1 but not a champion.

Game engine seems to be bias toward home team eg I won 7-0 at home vs Man U then lost 6-0 away to Man City playing as Villa. I lked the 'Hatchet Man' option tho'.

A typical Codemasters game. I.e. Crap.

Championship Manager this isn't. In fact it's not even good enough to be the retarded (hence adopted) brother of Championship Manager. In fact it's considerably worse than that.