He was a little bit slow for a defender, though, so if you’re looking for a more premium option it has to be one of Kevin Hofland or Tieme Klompe. I’d rather have started with 10 men than have a ‘Right Only’ footed player as left centre back.Tommy Jonsson was a great budget option from Halmstad who you could always rely on at the lower levels. I doubt there is any empirical evidence to back this up – but it just felt right. N Champ it was imperative to have a left or either footed player as your left centre back.
Loved bombing forward and had a delightful left peg on him. If Duff was a bit Gary Neville, Arca was more your Patrice Evra.
Arca was the more difficult player to sign but he just edges out Venetidis for all-round quality. So you could say they were way ahead of their time seeing as this game is 14 years old! Georgatis was absolute quality going forward, but slightly suspect defensively and at 28 years old a bit of a stop-gap solution. All three were your archetypical modern attacking full-back. The choice came down to Arca, Grigoris Georgatos and Stelios Venetidis. He gets up and down the pitch all day, rarely makes a mistake, and chips in with his fair share of goals and assists. Sign Micky Duff from Cheltenham for about 22k at the start of the game, and trust me, right back is sorted for the next 10 years. Both great keepers but, as the Greek had a tendency to get sent off two or three times a season, I’ve opted for the more dependable Frenchman. It was between Sebastien Frey and Dionisis Chiotis for the number one spot. You couldn’t press the opposition in this version without your entire side getting too knackered to see out the season. Under team instructions I set the mentality to ‘Attacking’, the passing to ‘Short’, and the pressing to ‘No’. The perfect blend between attack and defense. A formation suitable for any club and any division you happen to find yourself in. OK, well it was a long time ago, to be fair.To help jog your memory, I’ve put together a legends XI from that wonderful 01/02 version.For purely research purposes, of course, I picked Man Utd as my team for ease of signing players. Remember when you could finish an entire season in one evening? The likes of Alfonso Perez and Ibrahim Bakayoko killing it in CM97/98, or Cherno Samba winning titles almost single-handedly in CM01/02? We just don’t have the time, and consequently, most of us have retired from the game. Nowadays Football Manager takes up roughly the same amount of time as managing an actual real life football club, perhaps more. We’ve got relationships, we’ve got kids to look after, and we’ve got jobs to keep. In bygone days you could get away with saying stuff like ‘I’ll just play out the remainder of the season’ when it’s already 3am.Not anymore. Football Manager 2016, the latest version of the legendary football management game that began life as Championship Manager back in 1992,įor the ‘Champ Man’ generation the new releases probably won’t mean much.