Previews// Championship Manager 2010

Then there was training. You can perform an array of training drills with your players to identify their strengths and where things need to improve. Apparently, going by my previous results, Evra can’t cross a ball, so I had him slogging out some wing practice for a while. The UI told me that practising drills would improve my players’ stats, but too much could take its toll on their fitness.

Unfortunately there’s no notification of either the benefits or disadvantages to a player’s state. Maybe it’s the MMO player in me, but I’d like to see something after a session, not quite to the extent of an XP-style levelling up system, but something that shows the training I’m running is actually having an impact.

Finally my set pieces. You can orchestrate set pieces from the below attacking positions:

Left corner
Right corner
Left F(ree)K(ick)
Right FK
Centre FK

For each you can add several set-piece routines. From what I can tell this seems to be very well received so far. My experience was much different. There is a certain degree of success to be had here, but it falls far short of what is being said of it.

You can select the set-piece taker, the players involved, and the movements they make. The positioning of your players is as accurate as it is on the tactics screen – i.e. there are large chunks of pitch that you simply can’t direct a player towards. Couple that with the free-kick taker deciding to not be able to kick a ball three out of five times, and it becomes very frustrating. Essentially the point of practice is that you get good at what you’re training for. These players don’t.

After spending a number of hours getting lost in some of the game's new features (in a predominantly positive way) it was time to take on Chelsea. Unfortunately there was no tale to be had here. It was a boring 0-0 to penalties victory for Chelsea. It was realistic in another way: Rooney did abide my instructions and got a yellow card.

CM 2010 is moving in the right direction for me and, while some of the wrinkles in the new features need to be ironed out, it’s a positive step forward. It’ll be interested to see at launch how the game plays out over a season.