I was fired last night. True story. Fired at roughly 11:15pm, sitting in my bedroom with the monitor's magnificent glow painting images across my troubled face. The subject line of the e-mail cut like a knife. "Bennett sacked by board." Three seasons of hard work wasted.

Excuse the dramatics. It's hard not to take it personally at times.

Following a well-documented split from Eidos, which saw the publisher retain the Championship Manager name but not the valuable content, Sports Interactive have returned and are prepared to take over your existence once again with Football Manager 2005 - their spiritual successor to the venerable managerial series.

And for the most part, veterans to the genre will waltz straight in and pick things up with minimal effort. Load it up for the first time and you'll be hit with the familiar sense of your life slowly slipping away. The interface, while a lot smoother and incredible intuitive, is essentially built over the same features present in Championship Manager 03/04, and while there are new, welcome aspects to the game, this is essentially an update to the management game many of us have known and loved for many years now.

Most of you know the basics. You choose a team from over 150 leagues across the world and take charge, with the ultimate goal of leading them to as much success as possible. Fail to perform and you'll be sacked. In between, you'll be choosing your squad, messing with tactics, watching your team play, creating training regimes, negotiating transfers and contracts, having it out with rival managers, taking part in cup matches and stressing out when everything goes pear-shaped. But what about the new features?

The manager mind games are interesting at first, but later prove to be more of a novel personal aspect rather than an essential component of the game. The main problem is the lack of impact they actually have, rarely ever building up to anything more than a few empty threats before an insignificant mid-table clash. Sure, they provide a little light relief when everything is crashing down around you, but bad media decisions can often be reversed quite easily, and soon spiteful playground slanging matches sprawled over the back pages of the paper are all but forgotten. More could have been done with this - a kind of character-building exercise similar to that in Fable would have been terrific - but unfortunately it has fallen short. Enjoyable, but short.

The inner workings of the tactics screen have been subject to a very welcome overhaul though, allowing managers to adjust team and individual player behaviour through the introduction of categorised slide bars. This screen becomes one of your most revisited as you chop and change your squad, playing with their strengths and weaknesses as you attempt to get the balance just right. Individual player tactics are important - adjusting the sliders to reflect their position and statistics can make all the difference in an important match. As complicated as it may sound, more often than not it's common sense, and soon you'll begin to understand how your squad works, and more importantly, how to get the best out of your players.

Going into the match, the engine is once again rendered in 2D and is strangely compelling to watch, somehow triggering the kinds of emotions only deemed possible through watching the real thing on a big screen TV. I've lost count at the amount of times I've punched the air as I've scored, or winced in pain as the goals mounted up against me. It can be a little ropey at times - I've grown tired of players being booked after only a minute into the match, or being sent off for having a go at the referee only seconds after receiving their first yellow. Small niggles perhaps, but increasingly frustrating in times of desperation. Otherwise, all of the statistics imaginable are available down the side, updating in real-time as the match plays out, and the engine itself is incredibly capable of doing all it needs to. Tactics can be changed on the fly as well, switching to attacking and defensive styles, ordering players to behave differently or changing the entire shape of the team.

With so much to consider, it's far from the proverbial walk in the park. It will challenge and frustrate, yet it's that obsessive human desire to always come out on top that will drive you on. Even at the times when you feel as if the odds are firmly stacked against you, you'll still pile hours upon hours into it before admitting defeat. This may all sound a little negative, but it's not - it's all so wonderfully absorbing, offering blissfully addictive qualities in incredible abundance. An hour of play turns into an entire evening, and soon you're pumping your body full of shots of espresso and Pro Plus to see where the season ends up. After accumulating 48 collective hours of cumulative managerial experience, I can confidently proclaim that this is the epitome of "just one more go" gaming.

However, it's certainly not perfect, and while it does so many more things right than wrong, it's not an excuse to ignore them. For a game that makes such an effort to be as friendly and intuitive as it can be, Sports Interactive really do need to address the shockingly uninformative training screen - comprising of an unfriendly collection of varyingly-sized arrows with very little in the way of a player analysis. Some will find the process of comparing players, searching the transfer market for bargains and negotiating contracts with hot prospects a little tedious, but it all makes the game. Watching a gambled signing dance past three defenders and slot the ball into the bottom corner to grant you promotion evokes a great sense of wellbeing and pride.

If you've never played a Championship Manager game before, you may struggle to understand how a title which appears so dull on the surface can be so utterly engrossing. It's not surprising, but it really is one of those games you need to sit down with, pile some effort into and see where it takes you. It's certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea - I fail to see how anyone with a strong aversion to the beautiful game could enjoy it - but for those willing to take the plunge, there's just no better management sim out there. For me, afternoons in front of Sky Sports Soccer Saturday just wouldn't be the same without it.

Scot Bennett

+ One of the most absorbing and addictive games ever created.
+ The most comprehensive football database we've ever seen.
+ As deep and complicated as you need it to be.

- Manager mind-games not quite all they could have been.
- The training screen really does need some work.
- Lack of sleep, etc.

I woke up on Sunday at around about midday. This is not unusual for me; I love sleeping at the weekends, and the previous night had been a vivacious orgy of drinking, obscure conversation and several classic episodes of Spaced. I stumbled out of bed, flipped the switch on the kettle and placed two slices of bread into the toaster. Sitting down at my computer, I promptly loaded up the recently released Football Manager 2005 demo (download now) and continued from my save game.

"Only for an hour," I quietly said to myself, raising the buttered slice to my mouth.

That was foolish. Five hours. I had been sitting in front of my computer for five hours while I stressed meticulously over my team selection, several injury worries, a multitude of failed tactical changes, and a host of other managerial issues. And it certainly didn't feel like five hours. It had only felt like one, possibly two at the very most. Yet, up and down the country, there were thousands of like-minded individuals all facing the same problem. Five hours. Damn.

We never learn though, and those wishing to once again take control of their favourite team can rest easy in the knowledge that 140 leagues from around the world have been implemented into the game, including every English division right down to the Conference North and South. In all, Football Manager 2005 boasts around 235,000 players from 14,000 clubs, of which 5,300 can be managed. The option to start unemployed is also there for those who would rather fall into the job more naturally, although be aware that you'll likely have to start from the bottom - yet many would say taking a poorly ranked club to the top is one of the greatest appeals of the game.

Interaction is something that Sports Interactive were keen on improving on in Football Manager 2005, making the game feel a little more personal by allowing you to shape the game around your own individual. Throughout the season you'll be able to communicate with the media, trading blows with rival managers, and sometimes even your players, disciplining for any unjust actions while trying to ensure they are ultimately kept happy.

Of course, it won't just be you who'll be sticking the boot in. The media will often feel the need to criticise your tactics, squad choice or chances of finishing anywhere near the top half of the table come the end of the season, while rival managers relish the opportunity to launch mind-games in order to break your squad down before an important match. It becomes increasingly important to handle these comments with the best judgement in order to prevent your squad from losing faith in their manager.

If you find yourself in a bit of a mess, in a rush to move the game along or perhaps just plain lazy then you get ask one of your club assistants to help with the team and tactic selection. Realism is once again an integral factor and although the right members of staff will often make respectable decisions, the more incompetent coaches can - and will - make mistakes, resulting in severe losses and a lack of confidence from the club board. It's now more important to manage your staff as well as your squad, especially when you discover that the right assistants will bring in the right results.

The tactics screen is something that's been tweaked considerably, even if the general look and feel of it remains essentially the same as previous versions of Championship Manager. Various slide bars allow you to instantly change the playing style, such as allowing a certain degree of creative freedom or focusing on more direct passing than the occasional long-ball up the field. These can all be changed on the fly during matches and are incredibly useful for modifying the general playing disposition of your team.

For example, if you're clasping onto a 1-0 lead with ten minutes remaining you can quickly modify your tactics on the fly to play more defensively, closing down attackers and focusing more on keeping possession rather than feeding the ball through to your forward players. There's an incredible amount of depth in these options, right down to telling individual players where to stand from free-kicks and corners - something that becomes important if you wish to remain ahead of the game.

The match engine remains similar to the one seen in Championship Manager 4 and, as previously seen, does its job well. The top-down view makes it easier to assess tactical changes as well as monitor player performance, and while there are still moments of bemusement - incredibly dubious offside and other general refereeing decisions left me raving - it's strangely invigorating to watch. The text commentary has reportedly been improved, although the demo only featured a handful of phrases - a limitation we're assured not in place for final product.

While the complexity of games like this can be incredibly daunting for the newcomer, Football Manager's incredibly intuitive interface holds everything together with remarkable efficiency, ensuring that even the most casual player can get stuck straight in. There's no denying that Football Manager 2005 includes one of the most comprehensive football databases seen in any game, but the interface does a wonderful job of hiding it all away and only showing what you need to see when you need to see it. Everything just feels a whole lot smoother, ensuring that it's just as easy on the eyes as it is on the brain.

It was always going to be a risk increasing the depth of the package but Sports Interactive have pulled it off, somehow actually turning it into something heavily accessible - more so than any of their previous efforts. A full release - along with a gold demo - is not far off now, and with many of the issues raised by an enthusiastic community fixed, there appear to be plenty of reasons for the fans to migrate over to Football Manager 2005 this season.

Scot Bennett