That cheating Sam

What chairman at a club would allow his manager to manage another team at the same time?

Seriously I liked the game myself but was a little less successful than you,think I won 3 fa cups and one league,then discovered girls............ie the wife put a stop to my hours of fun upstairs

"Nii Odartey Lamptey (born 10 December 1974) is a former Ghanaian professional footballer and current assistant manager of Sekondi Wise Fighters".

That is the best name I have ever heard for a football club! Legendary....

Not to steal Ste Traverse's thunder but I made the comment about the Champ/Football Manager cheat. The best thing about the older Champ manager games was as they were made by Paul and Ov Collyer, who are huge Everton fans, they always made us an amazing team after a few seasons.

All this talk of the game is making think about dusting off an old copy of FM07 that's sat next my computer and immersing myself into the game again.

I'm with you there Sam, complete with the 2 clubs ownership! My reason for the 2nd club though was to make an Everton B team (like in Barcelona etc have in Spain).

I'd signed all the youngsters I wanted to my B team - which resided in the Npower Championship (whatever it was called back then), with their average matchday squad age being around 19. I'd then sign the players to Everton when they had suitably developed within my controlled B team environment (rather than sending them out on loan & hoping the loan team used them correctly).

The only issues were how to make the team play well enough that all the players got good ratings and developed, but at the same time stopping this feeder club from being promoted. The solution was to play my keeper outfield in the last 20 minutes so that we leaked goals with every opposition shot!

Legends were born on this game. I remember being absolutely ecstatic when we signed Bakayoko. He was a perfect blend of Maradona's technical ability and the goal scoring prowess of Pele.

Jaysus the hours I put into that game..... Me and a friend were so addicted we'd sit in the pub discussing the players..... "ah Tonton Zola Moukoko he's a bit mercurial, never know what you get from him, now your Kennedy Bakircioglü, pick him up for small change, always put's in a good shift" ..... all this while a real match would be on the telly!

Cherno Samba..

I was more a Football Director II fan though

I was also ridiculously addicted to this game, I can't remember the year but Julio Arca (Sunderland) and (forgive the spelling attempt) Adres Alessandro the latter almost impossible to prize away from his team (I think it was River Plate at the time) were mustard,

I can remember being hooked on it from the first version, 92/93 season I think? Nii Lamptey was a foreign player so was hard to buy but I always remember a few certs when you started a new game..
1> Have Tranmere as your second team because they had a bank balance of £20M, as apposed to Everton's measly £3M. You'd then sell some nobody to them for a record fee.
2> Shearer could be picked up for £2.5M.
3> Mark Stein, (from QPR) would get you 30+ goals in the first season and you picked him up for less than £1M.
4> Jamie Forrester! 18 year old from Leeds who was the original wonder-kid. Would be top scorer and player of the year until he was about 30.
5> Formation of 4-1-3-2 would wipe the floor for many seasons.
6> Ray Wilkins (36 in the game) would be great in the anchor-man role sitting between defence and midfield.

Me and my mates would waste hours playing this game. Still, at least it was social in a weird way as you had to be in the same room. No online gaming back then!

What is all this talk of managing multiple teams?!

I was a fully paid up member of CMA (Championship Manager Anonymous) for a good 7 or 8 years. Needless to say, I won everything with Everton, before moving on to build an all-conquering Nottingham Forest side (not really sure why). Then, even more strangely, I dominated for a while with Lyon (before they became good in real life).

I weaned myself off just in time for University finals, but a part of me does still miss it!

Best CM player I ever had? The rugged Polish centre half Jacek Bak - superb defender and always good for 7-10 goals a season from set pieces (heading 20 obviously). A modern day Derek Mountfield!

Tonton Zola Moukoku

Being playing since 93. Players that were awesome I can remember off the top of my head were: Adu, Taribo West (on a free), Teddy( Lucic (on a free) Saviola, Fabien Paim and Mads Jorgensen. There's plenty more but I can't remember

Leo Fortune-West

I'm probably talking 97-98 here but does anyone remember South American powerhouse Ever Moas? A centre back so strong and fierce you could guarantee a clean sheet, right up until his inevitable sending off in the first 5 minutes.

Me and my eldest boy have had a regular Sunday session in 1995 and are still going strong. For many years it was a virtual world in which I could make everything right for the Blues -if only it was that simple in real life. Rumour was the Colyer boys gave EFC full access the the private data base and yet we still ended up with Naismith !

My most memorable players would be Haruna Babangida and Maxim Tsigalko- a 60 goal a season man in the right EFC set up

Was always a Sensible Soccer man myself, now there was a game.

I would never give myself the Everton job as I didn't want to cheapen it by the pixelated chairman giving it to an unknown manager (wtf?!) but would take the Blackburn or Tranmere manager's role with a view to getting the Everton job on merit.. I wouldn't put my appointment past the chairman, pixelated or not!

Ever Moas! There's a name I haven't heard in about 20 years.

Yeah Teddy Lucic at the back and Tommy Svindal Larsen in midfield. Glory days.

Sean Patton, Sensible Soccer was a great game. Spent many, many hours on that as a young man. Always loved the after-touch thingy, curling the ball into the back of the net. Ha ha.

And the memories come flooding back, ( not in great detail but i'll try ),

Remember buying the likes of Saviola and Pablo Aimar as kids and then bringing them up through the ranks, must of started as a spanish team because in England their was a problem with work permits for them (not so much on the continent).

But what a game, spent many a night on it.

Ps Trevor ( above ) hated that game as a mate of mine could always score from the half-way-line any time he wanted (ps Gary you twat).

And Tiemo Tainio ( Icelandic, not the correct spelling I would imagine), at Spurs?

That as without Google so no laughing.

Paul Kelly, never play against human opposition it'll only make you made when you lose. Mind you, I used to lose to the CPU a lot and that made me angry. Must have gone through quite a few joysticks.

Kevin Rapley from Notts County was a great striker who would guarantee you 20-25 goals a season in the Prem when developed. A steal for £250k in 2000 version.

Nii Lamptey, I haven't heard that name for a long time... what a hero, always my first signing for Everton in Champ Manager 92-93. I always used to sign Joey Beauchamp from Oxford as well, cue domestic and European dominance for the Toffees!

And the Granddaddy of them all:

http://blog.kevintoms.com/play-football-manager-now/

I always found David Unsworth was a one-man defence, about the 96/97 edition. Other great defenders I had: Steve Nicol and Neil Ruddock. Aghahowa and Steven Reid were great playmakers and I remember Nigel Clough scoring 70 odd goals in each of 3 consecutive seasons. Jack Rodwell was a colossus in recent editions and Seamus Coleman and Fellaini are also great in the last couple editions.

That's 20 years worth of addiction!

In a more recent edition of Football Manager, I had the benefits of a signing made by my predecessor, David Moyes. I played this guy in attacking left midfield role in a 4-2-3-1 formation and won the domestic double and Champions League. He won Player of the Year, scored for fun, and set up loads more.

His name: Magaye Gueye.

I used to love the game around 2005 or so but recently bought a recent one and couldn't get in to it. Then I discovered SoccerManager.com and now I'm addicted to it. Worth a go, lads!

Also a massive fan of both Sensi and CM/FM and was lucky enough to work in the games industry and get to be paid to play them!

The Collyers are still involved with Sports Interactive (which makes Football Manager now – although owned by Sega) and Everton do use their amazing scouting database (I guess for free). Wonder if they could convince Sega to buy the club? Real life FM? Although I think FM have some sponsorship for Watford and AFC Wimbledon.

What a great game! I actually remember Nii Lamptey from the version of CM just before this one (CM 93) when you had to buy Lamptey from the "Foreign Transfer" market. You'd get him for around £3m and he was frickin awesome!

Funnily enough, I actually posted a blog about my top 10 fave CM/FM players of the last 20 years if anyone wants to take a look: http://stevenscaffardi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-top-10-best-championshipfootball.html

Thanks for the memories guys! As far as I can remember I started off with Champ Man 2 and its up date disks.. and havent looked back since. I'd love to know how many hours of my life we spent on that game!

What about Mark Pembridge, Craig Short, and Tommy Johnson all at Derby - awesome.

Craig Hignett at M'boro
Ceri Hughes at Luton

I still play 99/00 to this day - my trick is to sign Willie Howie from Partick, Jamie Ingledow from Rotherham, Andy Paxton and David Collins, Carl Laurie from Crewe, Simon Davies (yes, him), Johnathon Boardman from Palace, Ronnie Bull and Paul Ifill from Milwall, Matthias Asper from AIL, Mark Van Bommel very cheap from PSV and break the bank for Robbie Keane. Fend off relegation in season 1 (Watford, Wimbledon and Bradford always go down) and in 5 years you have a home grown team of internationals. Where do I get the money? You'd be surprised how much Arsenal are prepared to pay for Kevin Campbell... (or Juventus for Ibrahim Bakayoko in CM3)

I started playing in '99. My all conquering Everton team was Captained by a certain Stephen Hughes!! He was awesome. Goals,assists, dead-ball specialist, everything. Imagine my excitement when we actually signed him for real!! He didn't quite live up to my expectations. And Carl Laurie........Jesus,I haven't heard that name in about 12 years. The ultimate utility man!

This has made me reminisce back to the halcyon days of the 90s where my success was unparalleled. I think the biggest example of my genius was developing the wonder 4-2-1-3 formation, which swept all before it no matter what team I was in charge of. My star centre-forward was the renowned world-beater Chris Bart-Williams, who in one season netted 65 goals for me.

Other great players I remember were Tonton Zola Moukoko and Ibrahima Bakayoko. I also remember around 95-96 Zinedine Zidane was a left back.