Player manager was at the time THE game to play on your C64.
As you were involved in the game personally as a named player it brought days of playing trying to better your own side.
I sat up into the wee small hours playing this as a kid and look forward to doing so again as a bigger kid!
Player manager brought the thrill of not only managing the team you picked but the enjoyment of seeing yourself perform whether starting at the bottom of the football rung (i.
e. lower league English level) or at the highest level (Premiership - or in this case the old Division One).
Watching yourself struggle to get victories or losing form was pretty painful at the time although the overall gameplay for what would now be regarded as graphically and play ability inferior to say Fifa manager or Championship manager was extremely high and very, very addictive.
The game itself always seemed to see you struggle when first taking over a club but gradually - sometimes slower than you wished - you began to find your feet which saw your side climb the league table in stages.
The transfer market, while obviously limited due to the lack of depth within the game due to the lack of kilobytes available to programmers back in the
day, was always able to provide a challenge and spring up the odd bizarre, unlikely or impossible deals.
Current and former Internationalists were regularly found plying their trade with poor clubs whilst you were seemingly unable to purchase them!
There are many football games which were about at the same time included Football Director, Football manager, Tracksuit Manager and International Manager, but this game ranks as highly as any of them and in fact is significantly better than International Manager.
Evidently Championship Manager is a real classic. Must have.
