Football Manager 2007

With the opportunity to take control of thousands of clubs around the world and put in situations real life managers are put in during their daily managerial careers makes the gameplay of Football Manager 2007 not only exciting but extremely realistic. While you sit and watch your favourite team and claim how you'd make them better in the transfer market, what tactics you'd use and a lot more, you get the opportunity to make your thoughts more than thoughts.

The new features on this year's addition are what set this managerial sim higher than their competitors.

The opportunity to have feeder clubs are an amazing feature that most fans would have wanted ever since they knew it existed. Having feeders will allow you to poach away young prospects from your feeder club for cheap knock off prices, as well as given the opportunity to send your youngsters who aren't ready for first team football and are to high of quality to be playing in your youth side or reserves the opportunity to go play regular football in a real competitive league which will only help them grow in potential. There are also advantages to the feeder club situation even if you're a smaller club. You could get the next Shevchenko on your books if your parent club feels the youngster needs more football. Not to mention the extra finances it could bring to both sides of teams. Higher quality teams can get feeders from Asia, America and so on, which will boost financing in merchandise. Were as smaller clubs can arrange friendlies easier with the bigger club, if they are your parent and get more gate receipts.

Also this edition allows you to interact with players more. You can ask your top player from a lesser known country could he recommend a player from his nation that the team could sign, you never know, he may pick out a gem. You can also ask them to recommend staff that could possibly help the team improve.

The new youth system in this year's addition allows you to be the new Arsenal and build on youth. When signing a young player you can ask him to be tutored by one of your key, experienced players thanks to the player interaction feature.

Another few features in this game which would catch an eye are the possibility of the club you're managing to get took over. It could mean the end of your £1m a year budget and get you a sugar daddy like Roman Abromovich. This feature really adds to the realism of today's modern game.

Pre-match is a lot better on this edition with you given the opportunity to give team talks. You can give your team the spirt to go out and perform a giant killing or you can even tell them to relax if it's only a friendly or a less important game. You can also give tactics to dangerous individuals of the opponent like pushing them onto their weaker foot and close them down at every opportunity, which allows you greater chance of picking up the win.

As with past FM's, the game has a severe problem with bugs. You can see yourself picking up a lot of injuries and finding it extremely hard to pick up a win. But like every version this will all be fixed by the patch that is usually released a few days after (released as you read this).

Apart from the over flow of bugs without the patch, Football Manager 2007 would be highly recommended by any managerial sim player. I can honestly say that there is no game similar to this genre that compare to SI's edition for this year. Also with this game being so popular allows you for more updates made by the players of FM, like database updates which will update transfers, board takeovers etc. You will also find countless amounts of interface graphics available on the Internet like skins, face packs and kits. There is also a wide community for you to discuss this game with other players.