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"If you like football, you'll love this," promises the back of the box. Okay, well let's say for the sake of argument that I've been a fanatical Bristol Rovers supporter for as long as I can remember, and was only prevented from pursuing a career in the sport by an unfortunate skateboarding accident at the age of seven. I still can't see what I'm supposed to be getting excited about. For me, the joy of football has always been found out there on the field, not in the huge quantities of statistics that are generated as a by-product.

All the same, I have (sort of) enjoyed football management games in the past, and it's inevitable that, whatever I write in this review, a certain percentage of the population will consider this to be the answer to all their dreams. It's certainly got more options, more leagues, more lists of numbers and more evidence of a concerted effort to 'get it right' than any management game I've played in ages.

It's unfortunate then that Domark have committed the fundamental error of overlooking the only reason most people ever bother loading up these things at all: there aren't any match highlights! What are they playing at? What's a football management game if it hasn't got little stick people running around scoring the same goal over and over again? The only real concessions to the 20th Century we have here are those two digitised footballers you might be able to make out in the background. Make no mistake - we're looking at something marginally more attractive than the announcement boards at Victoria station.

Not only that, there's a ridiculous amount of disk accessing and general hanging around to be endured too, during which you're lucky to be placated by a tiny "Please wait" message in the corner of the screen. You're often left wondering whether the computer has perhaps found something more interesting to do.

You can write me all the letters of complaint you like, but this is by far the most tedious game I've played this year.

All the ingredients of a classic footy management game, and in many ways that's exactly what it is. That said, it bored me to tears all the same.