LMA Manager 2007

A worthy challenger to Football Manager?

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Any comprehensive soccer sim that has a title ending in 'manager' obviously alludes to the fact that you have to coach a football team. At least that's what it used to mean, before developers had done all they could with that and resorted to dumping tons more responsibility onto your already aching shoulders. Gone are the days where videogame players were satisfied with their team-managing lot. Nowadays they want more, more, more. The 'more' usually manifests itself in the form of billions of extra facts, figures, leagues and players plus the fact that you're no longer just head coach, but also club accountant, scout, secretary and the bearer of many other posts associated with an established football club. And, depending on your patience and willingness to delve into the deepest crevices of the job, you could be spending an awfully long time with LMA Manager 2007 or one or perhaps its biggest competition, Sports Interactive's Football Manager. Codemasters, creators of LMA have always said that the reason it can co-exist alongside the mighty Football Manager is because of its more user-friendly 'pick up and play' nature, though that's not to say that there's not plenty for stat fans to get excited about here. LMA Manager 2007 is the sequel to last year's 2006 version and to keep the punters interested Codemasters have unleashed a number of advancements that they hope will have you reaching for your pockets.

Initial impressions are good; with the appearance of a simple and welcoming interface to make sure that even the most hesitant of new managers feels at ease. Choose your team, 'create-a-manager' using a whole host full of attributes and then pick whether you want to dabble in pre-season pleasantries or not. After that, things obviously get a little bit more complicated but you're never a click away from an icon that in a simple, pictorial fashion will clue you into whether you'd like to press it or not - 'do you want to check your e-mail, buy a player, sell a player or meddle with your formation, perchance? Click me!' That's what they'd say if they speaked proper English, they would. Every conceivable option is easily accessible via a series of menus and sub-menus that collapse and retract in satisfyingly fluid motions.

Enough about the layout then, and onto the game proper: Codemasters claim that LMA 2007's player transfer options are the most detailed and advanced of any management simulation yet and they may just be right. 2006's version was criticised for unrealistic transfer outcomes, problems which on the whole seem now to have been ironed out. New technical wizardry means that purchasing a player is no longer a case of a quick flash of the cash followed by the click of a mouse, now relying more on your cunning and business skills. Many an e-mail may have to be exchanged with add-ons such as staggered payments and player bonuses an extra consideration alongside the standard fee. Making the experience even more true to life is the FIFA Pro Foundation's licence which allow real player names to be used, so you're able to scout and snap football's existing high fliers down to the emerging stars at grassroots level.

Player training has also undergone major tweaking. As well as the type of training you order your squad to undertake, now the team's performance and morale is affected by the environment in which they work. This means that if you want the Henry's and Rooney's of this world doing the business when it counts, they'll expect the very best pre-match facilities from you, not jumpers for goalposts and some boggy marsh full of tramps, cider cans in hand shouting insults from a soggy park bench. In addition, your tactics can be experimented with in full 3D training games as a way of deciding whether what you thought was best for your team was, in fact, about as much use as a broken metatarsal. Comprehensive training reports that focus on the performance of every player are also on show, allowing you to fully deconstruct and rebuild the perfect squad before your next big fixture.

Of course, the 3D graphics engine isn't just limited to the training ground antics of your team. After all, it only seems fair that you get to see the fruits of your labour (that being a good deal of time agonising over formation, player selection and the team's style of play and the link) pan out in glorious full-flowing realness. What's great about this is that if you have spent a lot of time on your team, it really is possible to notice the differences you have made between games in the way that they play. Of course, too, you're not just a dug-out spectator but also able to bark orders at your squad from the sidelines as frequently as you wish. Codemasters boast many improvements over last season's 3D match engine and they're certainly apparent here. Every player has a fair if not uncanny resemblance to their real-life self and the games flow at a pleasing rate, while the smoothness and range of player animations seems to have been expanded on. However, it's their emotions and mannerisms which are most impressive. Your pros get excitable, frustrated, tired and angry in a number of clear animations depending on the flow of the match. These gestures are highlighted during periods when the ball is out of play and lend themselves to providing an impressive televisual-style presentation. The television theme is continued post-match where you are able to have your games criticized by Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen as well as watching and reviewing every other result on tables similar in appearance to those that appear on Sky Sports and the BBC's live feeds and ticker tapes - on the Football One channel.

The question Is whether LMA 2007 is a reputable alternative to Football Manager, and judging by the improvements made in this latest version the answer has to be a resounding yes. It may not have the unimaginable wealth of statistics that FM manages, but that it doesn't is, in a way, the point. LMA manages to judge the balance between fun and accessibility for both newcomers and die-hards in a way that Football Manager seems to have overlooked. It's by no means perfect in that there are still the odd stupid AI inconsistencies in-game, but with so much data to process, the efforts to remain true to it's ease of use and the visible improvements over last year's efforts, LMA looks to finally be coming into it's own.

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By Andrew Macarthy