Try taking a black Biro and neatly adding the word 'Manager' to the title above, and you'll probably have sussed out what this one's all about already.

Things, though, have come a long way since the original 8-bit football manager game (called, curiously enough, Football Manager); there's a twelve page manual (with very small print) lurking in the depth of the box for a start, so you can see that there's rather a lot more to this game than one might first expect. Nevertheless, not much has changed in the gameplay department - it's the usual case of picking a team to manage, and then managing them to your heart's content, or (much more likely) until you get fired.

The game is played mainly from behind your desk where all your decisions are made (by selection) over the phone and via your intercom by talking to other managers, the press, your team and your secretary. If you remember, it's a good idea to keep regularly checking your diary to see what's on the agenda.

The remainder of the game consists of a board meeting once a week, which more or less informs you of how you're doing, training sessions where you fix the training of your individual players as you see 'fit' (ho ho), and then of course the match, where you pick the team, then decide on one of sixteen different game tactics to try and win with.

Believe it or not (for the sake of this review, you understand) I have actually played the game in some depth, and so can certainly vouch that it all feels very realistic - making a wrong decision somewhere really seems to alter events, as does upsetting the other characters (which you can do in such simple ways as going home every day without doing any actual work, for instance). The game seems generally up to 1991 Amiga standards - complex, and illustrated by some lovely graphics (well, lovely for this sort of game anyway) - but the fact remains that for many (I'd say most) people this just isn't the sort of thing that's likely to light their fire.

An up-to-date version of the rather old footie management type game, it's dubious that there's enough here to keep things burning long enough to justify 25 quid. Rather you than me.