Football Manager 2011 in a nut-shell is a football simulator designed to deliver the most realistic experience on the role of being a football manger. But beware, as the first and most important thing to know about Football Manger 2011 is that it will eat up the hours even days of your life. The complexity of the game makes it so fantastical and addictive that the eminent loss of your social life is a foregone conclusion.

Just utter the name Football Manager to it's passionate and loyal following and you’ll be met with an expression which says "Oh my god, I have a family, friends, a job and a goldfish". This is the understanding of football manager addicts who’ve seen the results of the database overdose, raging wives and girlfriends, neglected pets, take-away bills and piles of unwashed dishes being just some of the side effects. Damn, we love Football Manager.

So, what does this years version have to offer? Upon starting the game, you're greeted by a nice menu that allows you to start a new game, load up your save game, check for updates and edit options etc. In the beginning some might find the options, features and menus to be very overwhelming, but I guarantee the simplicity of the UI will make things much easier as you plough hours/days into the game.

The game is very complex from the start. You’ll get to setup the entire path of your club ahead, including choosing the nations you wish to have running in your footballing world, customising your own manager profile, and then taking control of your favourite club. As manager, your primary mission, of course, is to deal with everything you’d expect a manager to, from talking to the media and your clubs directors, to all transfer dealings to and from your club. Also of course all match tactics and player training. There is so much to be doing, and all from the very start of the game.

There's a tool-tip type adviser to help you get to grips with all of the features new and old alike. Most will turn this off at the start, but for those about to undertake the life of a manager for the first time, it will prove very handy indeed. There is also a handy searchable help file in-which you can find help on everything you wish to know in the game.

Moving to what is the heart of this manager experience, ultimately the most exciting prospect is leading your team to glory. But in order to do this, you’ll need to monitor players up for transfer, decide on the future of your own players, constantly oversee their morale, status and condition as well as put them through training to better their skills on the pitch. Just like in real life, injuries and international duty will put players out of action in the games ahead, and you’ll have to keep up with your emails to see how severe the injuries are and when your player will be able to return. It should be clear by now that Football Manager 2011 requires an enormous amount of reading, and mouse clicking.

New to this years offering includes being able to speak to all of your players directly. All conversation in the game are done via the text-based chat system, here you will be asked a question, and will have to choose a response from the selection available. It’s great fun to love your players in the media or talk about matches after the results, and either praise or bitch about other managers, which will affect their attitudes and feelings towards you based on what you say. This is a good way to build manager and player friendships alike as well as create enemies and rivalries, just like the mind-games seen in real football. You’re also free to seek advice from your players as well as request them to do things like coach potential youngsters in your squad.

This years offering also adds the player agent into the daily life of all your players. This now changes the contract process from previous games. It is now a lot more realistic. There are a handful of varying agent personalities that you’ll encounter, from friendly people-persons to what you can only call gold-diggers. It makes the process of trying to keep your star players that little bit more difficult. Where as before, you would get permission to talk to a player you wish to sign, offer a contract, and a few days later they would tell you yes or no. Now you talk directly to the players agent, and negotiation are in real-time, you make an offer, they will say yes or no, or they require a certain clause or signing of fee. And even the agent will require a fee. Once the agent is happy, he will then either bring the player into the room to finalize, or take your offering away and get back to you in due time with his clients decision. Its all very good stuff, and feels more involving.

The whole game now has more character. if you upset players, they will have tantrums, demanding transfers after you’ve asked them to pick up their game or left them out of the squad, or hustling for higher wages off of the back of one good game. It's down to you as manager to deal with them as you please. You can bow down to their every whim, or tell them you make the decisions here, shut up or ship out. It's your choice.

The game goes even deeper, you will have to to assign penalty takers, corner kick and free kick takers as well as hand tasks to individual players such as a free-role or playmaker. Another new feature comes in the preparation and training for the forthcoming matches. This sees you able to choose the level of work you want your team to put in. Once selected, you’re free to choose which area of play to focus on and work at, such as team blend, defensive positioning, attacking movement and attacking and defensive set pieces.

The matches themselves are fully simulated games. You’re able to choose to watch the entire match or only key/highlighted moments, or even just use the onscreen commentary. The ingame match engine has also had a slight overhaul, but still I find the graphics here truly comical and slow paced, but many swear this is the only way to fully see your squad perform. I must admit, I stick to the commentary only, and I still feel just as much involved.

As in the previous version, you can shout in-game advice from the sideline. You can also change the balanced or offensive approach as well as tell them to retain possession, take shots when they come, get the ball forward – there is a whole list of them to choose from. You’re only allowed to issue a certain amount of instructions at once before your new ones begin overwriting the old, thus changing the entire tactics of your team.

As you reach half-time, you will be able to praise or express your disappointment at your players’ performances, either individually or as a team. Then after the game you’ll also get to make comments as well as chat to the press about the opposing team and their manager or individual players. But the choice of your words here ultimately affects the morale of your players and approach they have to the game. Comments directed elsewhere will affect opinions of the media and other managers. All very good fun.

Many may find all the reading of never-ending footballing matters extremely boring. But this is Football Manager. Although you can play multiplayer on the same PC, It’s truly a game for a single player.

Football Manager's only real flaw is the fact that newcomers could find the menu system a total ball-ache. While the menu layouts are very organised, they can be frustrating. Navigating is hard, and the guidelines don’t always help you to find what you’re looking for. Also, there is often so much that you have to attend to at any given time that you end up either neglecting areas that require your attention or losing hours upon hours to the game, but only moving an inch forward in terms of game progression. Of course this comes with the territory, and is to be expected, but newcomers may get overwhelmed by it all. All I can advise is take it slow. The whole game is one big learning process, and in time you will know what menu you need for all your daily tasks.

I know there are a huge amount of features in Football Manager 2011 that I have not mentioned, this is purely because there really are so so many, and the only way you’ll truly get to experience just what this game is about is to try it for yourself. You will be challenged, irritated, excited, addicted, and thrive on success and feel rejected on failure, amongst many other things. The game is so unpredictable, as it is entirely based on how you play and do your job as the clubs manager.

Football Manager 2011 is without a doubt the best at what it does. Even if you own FM2010, this game has enough changes to warrant a new purchase. The realistic feeling surrounding the entire game and massive amount of features makes it exciting and a joy to play, but at the same time it can easily become very tiresome. It will test your patience, but for most, this is the most realistic, impressively in-depth and near spot-on simulation of the role of a manager you can get. Yes the match engine still needs an overhaul, but you really won’t find a more addictive, life-consuming football game. So,until next year then.

Football Manager 2011 Gets An Official Game-Pad: 8.5/10