Phil king for England manager!

Producer: Tough Games/CRL
New Balls: £8.95 cass
Author: David Leitch and K Brice

Oh woe is me, Leicester City are stuck in the Second Division. When will they return to their former glory? (Whenever was that?! - Lloyd). The top of the First Division is surely where they belong. Oh well, all I can do is dream - or is it?

One of the best things about football management games is that they allow supporters of lowly clubs to see if they could do any better at managing their favourite team. Professional Soccer is the latest in a long line of similar games, allowing you to lead a team from the third division to promotion and success in the FA Cup.

Selected from a list of League sides, your team starts with 16 players of varying skill. Each has attributes for defence, midfield and attacking abilities. Defenders and attackers also have a preference for playing either in the middle of the pitch or wide. Before each match, eleven players plus a substitute must be selected from the squad. These can play in any one of eight strategic formations. Some of these are geared for defensive play (such as 5-3-2) while others suit an attacking style (3-2-5).

When you're satisfied with the team, it's time to start the match. While nothing much is happening in the game, the screen simply displays the two team line-ups, the time elapsed and the score. Messages appear from time to time, informing you that a player has been booked etc. But once one of the teams mounts an attack, the screen switches to an overhead view of the goalmouth to show the relevant action. And if you're getting thrashed ten nil or one of your players is injured, you can always send on the substitute.

When the final whistle is blown, the rest of the division's results appear one by one, and are followed by the resultant league table. After every few league matches your team also gets to play in the FA Cup, where they could meet one the really big teams like Liverpool for even Leicester!).

Between matches, players may be bought and sold in order to strengthen your squad. A list of forthcoming fixtures can also be viewed. Financial control is thankfully limited to buying and selling players - there's nothing - more boring than balancing books.

The wide range of options offered is enough to give adequate control of the club without slowing the game to a grinding halt. Fluent play is also aided by the neat menu-driven selection system which is a pleasure to use.

Following the recent Football Manager II (79%, Issue 54) and Tracksuit Manager (70%, Issue 56), yet another football management game is a bit much (even for me). But Professional Soccer offers an impressive range of team options, and is competently programmed with some decent graphics to boot. The fine presentation and easy-to-use menu system help to preserve the undoubted lasting appeal of this absorbing management simulation.

PHIL [78%]

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: not quite up to Match Day II standards, but better than those in Football Manager II
Sound: simple beeps
Options: definable keys, graphics on/off

I'm not normally one for football management games, but Professional Soccer has kept me glued to screen for ages. The menus are so easy to use, allowing fast access to an impressive range of options. Match presentation is also fine with some good (for the genre) graphics - an improvement on Tracksuit Manager which I quickly lost interest in due to its extremely dull match portrayal. Realism is heightened by the fact that every player has his own information file, giving all relevant details. So if you're a disgruntled Walsall fan, or just a typical armchair critic, Professional Soccer gives you the chance to find out what a hard job managing a football team really is. So get off Bobby Robson's back!
MARK [73%]

CRL
£7.95
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

In a way it was kinda inevitable that someone sooner or later would feast their eyes on Football Director and decide that it was ripe for picking. After all, footie games are big bucks in Specland, and FD, considering its humble Basic background, has been phenomenally successful - as regular Clinic readers will be all too aware.

And who better to do it than CRL. Not a company with which one naturally associates high quality product, CRL does nevertheless pull the stops out from time to time. Last year it was Sophistry, a brilliantly clever and fearsomely addictive puzzler. And now, appealing to very much the same sort of gamer, here's Professional Soccer, a game that can easily be summed up as Football Director with knobs on.

The story is much the same as usual. You're in Division Three (fortunately Div Four has been conveniently forgotten) and it's the start of the season. You've got a bit of cash - 100,000 smackeroonies in fact, but as boot fans know, this is but small change in the wild and wacky world of football - and you've got 18 players of varying abilities to work with. The players you get depend on the club you choose, and all 20 clubs in the division are rated between one (useful) and five (rubbish). This naturally means that you'll win rather more games with a one-rated team than a five-rated team, bit you have a performance target to live up to as well - and that's higher for the better teams. Fail and you're fired - succeed and you get another season's contract.

Each player is rated not only for his main skill (attack, midfield or defence), but also for the other two - so if you need someone to cover for an injured player, for instance, you know who to move where. Most of the other FD features are here - the long drawn-out results service (this one in fact seems even longer), the slow ticking through the game, the transfers and all the extraneous detail that games like this depend on so completely. One things that's been dropped is the money problem - all you have to worry about is buying and selling players, and then making sure you play the right ones in the right positions. Extras include a choice of tactical formations (many players are also specialists in the centre of the field or playing wide), and information not only on your players but all the others in the division as well (as in FD, most of these have the same names - in this case, Speedie and Dexter).

As with the very best 'dry' footie sims (as opposed to the arcadier Match Day games and the like), there's no action to speak of, and you're not required to exercise your joystick finger at any stage. If you want to, though, there's an 'ACTION' toggle which lets you see some of the more exciting moments in the game. This is all right for a while, but it slows the game down even further, and besides, the movement of the players (all apparently of Asian extraction, and to a man, wearing turbans) is so completely unlike that of normal footballers that it's of no real help to you at all.

The graphics and 'looks' of the game are of course way beyond the black-and-white minimalism of FD. There's a fair amount of mucking about with icons, which takes a little getting used to, but there are so many more options here that it's probably not avoidable.

Ah, but is it better? Will this supplant FD in our hearts? On balance, I don't think so. While it's ironed out many of the earlier game's faults - drab presentation, insufficient info on players, game-crashing bugs - it has also taken away some of those little touches that made FD so special. And although in many ways it's more difficult, it's also somehow less challenging. I miss the money problems, the charts of how many games people had played and things like that. And it does become irritating to have to press about two billions buttons to find out how long someone is going to be injured, instead of just calling upon one of the menus.

But these are quibbles. Professional Soccer is a worthy attempt to update Football Director, and as such, it's streets ahead in gameplay of it all too numerous competitors. Although anyone who likes a little action in their gaming will probably enjoy this as much as being trussed up and fed to the crocodiles, many FD fans will lap it up.

Label: CRL
Author: Kevin Brice, David Leitch
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

In its basic elements, Professional Soccer is the same as every other football managerial game on the market. Start in the bottom division with the aim to both get promoted and win the FA cup each season, buy and sell players to improve your team's statistics and basically enjoy getting beaten six nil by Aston Villa in the FA Cup semi finals.

The game employs a fairly original control system. The whole game is run via a small box in the bottom right hand corner which contains up to six small boxes, each one representing an available option. These range from the obvious such as load, save, buy/sell, tables/scores to the not so obvious player info and the downright mysterious team centre.

Each of the players in the game, and there are quite a lot of them, has some kind of detailed record. This includes age, health and best position, as well as any outstanding points, such as good penalty taker. At the bottom is a set price which you pay to buy the player should he be up for grabs.

The team centre is where all the interesting things take place. Two options are available to you in the team centre. One is formations. This is where you get to choose which of the eight possible formations you'd like the team to play in, ranging from the regulars such as 3-4-4 and 4-3-4, to 5-2-4.

The other option, you remember I mentioned two, is the selection option. The screen display changes into three windows. The left hand window, which takes up half of the screen, shows your players and all their statistics. The top right hand window shows a graphical representation of the formation, showing all the empty slots. Use left and right to move the flashing cursor to an empty spot, press fire and a bar will appear highlighting one of your players. Move this up and down to select the player you want in that particular position, and press fire to put him there. It's that easy.

The players are quite well detailed, each having four important statistics. These are defensive, midfield and attacking scores out of 25 and a fitness rating as a percentage. The player's position is listed as well, as either G for goalie, W for winger, C for centre and M for midfielder. When selecting your team you have to try for the highest possible score for the position the man plays. A defender with a high attack score is a bonus, not a must.

So, you've done all your good deeds and you're up against the opposition in a blood-thirsty battle between 22 savages all fighting for glory, or as we know it soccer. For most of the match, the screen shows all the players on screen for each team along with the score and the time. Unlike previous games, the time runs in three minute steps, 30 in all. Just like Football Manager, the game shows highlights of the match as they happen. These are quite entertaining to see, though they can become boring. Thankfully, they can be turned off. Graphically, they ain't bad however. They're far more realistic than FM2, though still have a long way to go before they come close to, say, Matchday 2.

It's hard to get started, granted, but that's how it should be. Remember, you are a struggling fourth division team. The only way you can get better is by buying better players and to buy better players, you have to get money and the only way you can get any money is to sell poor players.

Visually, PS is pretty cool. Various sizes of lettering and good clean windows make it even more attractive than Tracksuit Manager's layout.

SUPPLIER: CRL
PRICE: Spectrum £8.95 cass

The best way I con describe Pro Soccer is that it's Football Manager 2 with more player interaction, more fun, better graphics, playability, design and generally better game play. It may not have the complexities and subtleties of Tracksuit Manager, but it's just as much fun.

I can't remember how many times I've said this, but you take the role of the coach/accountant of a third division footy team and you have to try your damndest to get to the first division, as well as winning the FA Cup and so on.

I've been waiting for it to happen, and now it finally has. Someone has come up with a different control method for a managerial footy game. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a box. Inside this box are six smaller boxes. During the game, any or all of these boxes may be labelled with a different option. You have a little pointer which you hove to move so it points at the option you want. The options range from league tables and forthcoming fixtures, to a box mysteriously labelled Action and another labelled Team Centre.

The team centre is where you put together your dozen fighting fit plucky young lads whom you're going to send out against the world. There's two main things you can do in the TC. Firstly you con pick your formation from the seven presented.

Each of the players has a fairly detailed record which keeps track of things like his age, fitness, health plus any outstanding abilities he may have. Also, each player has three scores out of 25. Each represents that player's skill in the attacking, midfielding and defensive areas. Obviously their highest ability will govern their position, you don't put someone with a defence of 21 and an attack of eight in centre forward position, now would you?

The action, box is merely a switch. During the match, every time something happens of the remotest interest, the game switches from a statistical screen showing all the players playing at the time to a Football Manager-style sequence, where you get to watch the match being played. This is quite nice at first, but does get boring very quickly. The Action box lets you turn these sequences off, speeding up the game no end.

Pro Soccer is a very simplistic footy game. It's not straight simulation, but there's enough there to get you really involved. It's addictive, too. I've had it for a couple of weeks now, and I play it at any opportunity I get.

Visually it's the best of it's kind I've seen yet. Clean, sharp windows, mixed with good dose of colour and various sized lettering means that you're not looking at a drab screen.

As I've said, it doesn't hove all the subtleties of titles like Tracksuit Manager, but it's still fob. It's very easy to get into and damn sight harder to get out of. Try it, you'll be hooked for a good few months.