The big question, of course, is how these instructions translate to the progression of the match day itself. There were serious questions about the preview match engine code, so have these issues been solved? The short answer is watch this video. A longer, fairer, answer is that the latest patch has made strides in fixing the match engine problems, but several still remain.

It's not unreasonable to expect a few mistakes like the one in the video above. After all, England's fifth goal in their latest meeting with Croatia came from a similar situation and that was a match played at international standard. However, the frequency with which reality-troubling mistakes crop up places a serious strain on the suspension of disbelief. It's fine to see defenders making mistakes. It's less fine to see them ponderously gazing at the ball for a few seconds when it's in a dangerous area. Or to see a striker watch a ball sat two feet away from the goal-line and make no effort to bundle it over. It's as if the engine has decided that a goal isn't going to happen at that moment, but rather than making the striker shoot wide, just fixes him in place like a fool. No footballer, professional or otherwise, would ever behave like this.

What's especially troubling is that these problems seem to affect the lower and higher leagues with equal regularity, and this introduces something which can be poison to a football management game: doubt. When defenders at Inter Milan or Arsenal (with decent levels in 'positioning' and 'concentration' and so on) are making almost exactly the same mistakes as A N Other lower league journeyman, the effect that player statistics are actually having on play are thrown into question. It's this, rather than the other little match engine niggles, which is CM2010's biggest flaw. So many goals occur through weird circumstances in the match engine that it's impossible to be sure whether player or engine are to blame. If it is the latter, could that goal have ever been prevented with tactical nous?

Many things have been fixed and tweaked by the latest (September) patch, however, and this gives cause for optimism. I haven't seen any goalkeepers going on crazed suicide runs out of their box in this version, and full-backs no longer seem to be terrified to leave the 18-yard box - with the right instructions they will now attempt to close down onrushing wingers. Players are slightly less prone to hoofing the ball out for a corner when under no pressure. Flow and fluidity of play is still something of a problem, though this too appears to have been improved. Short passing around the penalty area will still often lead to absolute disaster, but my chaps seemed slightly more capable of stringing together a couple of passes without gifting possession. That is, when they were fit enough to take to the field.

Injuries occur rather more often than they should. At one point, after twelve league fixtures, I had ten people out injured. The unprecedented injury crisis that hit Everton last year was not as bad as this. Even when playing a low tempo game and adopting (what I felt was) a balanced training regime, problems persisted in this area. I guess the players were just having lumps kicked out of them in tough Northern Premier fixtures, but injuries happen so often that it creates a vicious circle. When you have barely eleven players fit for a match, you have to throw in guys at 80-85% condition - increasing the chances that they'll get injured too. Eventually, just as the youth team had run out of players to be plundered and my loan quota was exhausted, the situation began to turn around. A managerial challenge overcome, perhaps? You could look at it that way, but it seems unlikely that even semi-pro sides are expected to maintain squads of 25+ to deal with the level of injuries experienced.

A lot of the above is quite negative, but the core of CM2010 is actually very tight. The problems of modern football management games have been twofold. Primarily, disappearing into a vortex of complexity and bloated expansion, to the point where the manager is acting like the club's press officer, setting prices for scarves and laying the turf by hand. Secondly (and this is more of a personal view), a reliance on official licensing which allows them to use real player names and data, but restricts any forays into the darker side of the sport. Bungs, racism and criminal player activities will never be a part of any game which uses actual player data. CM2010 strikes back against the former by using admirable restraint and keeping managerial activities to a solid base of tactics, transfers, training and ... er ... talking (to players and agents.) However, the development team still have work to do. The match engine needs further patching to remove the elements of disbelief and to ease the injury situation, but there is, at least, a terrific backbone to work from. Anybody who bought this for £2.51 can sit back and wait for their investment to grow. For those hoping to pick it up at full price, be aware of the current problems or just hang on a bit longer for news of further patching.

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