CM/FM All-Time Best First XI: Left-Back

I normally do these in chronological order but there is one name that will instantly jump out at you from list so I need to start there. Zinedine Zidane. Now before you double check this is the post for you to vote for your best left-back in the game, no, I haven't just been on the receiving end of a Zizou butt and feeling a little dazed and confused! Believe it or not, back in Championship Manager 95/96 you could capture the promising young Zidane from Bordeaux and bag yourself a fairly decent left-back! I wrestled with this one about whether to include Zidane or not seeing as the criteria I set for these votes is that it should be players who never quite lived up to the expectation Champ Man put on their shoulders, but in this case I had to let it slide. After all, isn't this part of the beauty of the game? Sports Interactive and their network of scouts do a fine job identifying hundreds of hot prospects within the footballing world, but as often as they've got it wrong about a player who doesn't achieve global superstardom, this is just another wonderful example of how an incorrect stat in the game becomes a part of FM folklore.

Who is the best CM/FM left-back of all time?

Heck, I can even remember a 15-year-old Wayne Rooney being in the Everton U18s team in one of the versions as a AMR and he was crap! Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe that got that one right...

So Zidane stays in, but remember if you do vote for him, you are voting on Zidane the left-back you bought back in 1995, not the Zidane who went on to become one of the best attacking midfielders of all time!

Okay, so now we're back on track so lets go back a couple of seasons to CM93. There were two stand-out players for me. Liverpool's Steve Harkness and the hugely attack-minded Neil Lewis from Leicester City. Harkness was part of that Liverpool production line of youth players alongside the likes of Mike Marsh, Don Hutchinson, Rob Jones, Jamie Redknapp, Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler. On Championship Manager, they were an awesome team, but at first glance it is easy to separate the ones who made it, and the ones who didn't. Harkness was one of the ones who didn't. Despite making over a 100 appearances for the Reds and a brief spell with Benfica, he finished out his playing days with Blackburn Rovers, Sheffield Wednesday and Chester City.

Lewis is a bit of a strange case. He was certainly seen as one for the future whilst he was at Filbert Street, but after 5 years he moved on to Peterborough for a season but then seems to disappear off the radar in terms of his playing stats. After a three season absence, he turns back up again in 2001/02 playing for Ibstock United but that was for just one season. Trying to get to the bottom of this I did a bit of research and came across a Leicester City fans forum where some of the Foxes fans allege that he might have done some time in prison, but how true that is I don't know. Shame, because on the game he was amazing.

Fast-forward past Zidane and on to Championship Manager 4 and on to the man they call Jay McEverly, because, well, that's his name! McEverly could be bought from Blackburn Rovers and you'd have on your hands the next England left-back. But in reality the 29-year-old has not been able to find a place to call home yet, playing for a total of nine clubs in 12 seasons including the likes of Gillingham, Barsnley and now Swindon Town.

Mikael Dorsin is a player I remember very well as I'd always sign him on my Championship Manager 00/01 game. He was a great utility man to have, capable of playing anywhere across the back four and in the DMC role. You could get him from the easily pronounceable Djurgårdens IF for around £500k if memory serves me correctly, safe in the knowledge that you had found yet another Scandinavian nugget of gold.

There is a trio of players to choose from the legendary CM 01/02 version, namely Isaac Okoronkwo, Gareth Jellyman and Wilfred Bouma.Nigeria international Okoronkwo was able to operate at centre-back or left-back and was another of those amazing Shakhtar Donetsk players who frequently pop up throughout all versions of the game. Jellyman was one of the famous three Peterborough players alongside Matthew Etherington and Simon Davies that you would always have to buy. Even though it's fair to say none of the three ever achieved their CM God-like statuses in the real world, Jellyman was the least successful of the trio and went on to play for likes of Mansfield Town and Boston United., while Etherington and Davies enjoyed Premier League careers.

Bouma was the one I always tried to get. The Dutch international has had a decent career, starting and now playing back at PSV Eindhoven. But it was his move to Aston Villa in 2005 that would have had most Football Manager fans wondering if he was as good as we'd been led to believe. The answer is probably no, but he'll always have a place in our hearts.

Razvan Rat is up next. A name I like saying mainly because is sounds like Roland Rat and I have a pretty childish sense of humour. The CM 03/04 star had a sweet left foot and would guarantee you a few assists and goals from set-pieces. But when he joined West Ham (from Shakhtar Donetsk of course!) in 2013 we sadly got our confirmation that he wasn't the player we thought he was. One because he didn't play that well, and two because he'd ended up at West Ham! In the same version where Rat first starred, there was a player called Mike Zonneveld who was a bit tasty as well and you'd manage to get for around the £2m mark from NEC. But let's be fair, Mike Zonneveld doesn't even sound like a footballer. He sounds like some sort of Marvel superhero. It was never going to work out.

My personal favourite is up next in he shape of one Joe Mattock. Oh Joe, why are you not tearing up that left flank for England like Football Manager 2008 promised? Luke Shaw is basically the player Joe Mattock should have been, but instead of a multi-million pound move to Old Trafford this summer, Mattock will be a Sheffield Wednesday player after not cutting the mustard at West Brom. If you could fight off the competition at the start of FM08, you could sign Mattock from Leicester City for the bargain price of around £2m.

Two South American players from Football Manager 2009 feature next. Argentinean Fabian Monzon was available from Boca Juniors and Peru left-back Juan Manuel Vargas was at Fiorentina. Arguably both could still live up to their FM top billing but at the time of writing Monzon is at Catania and Vargas was shipped out on loan to Genoa last season.

Last up is one half of the Brazilian twin brothers Rafael and Fabio. To be honest both could have made the cut. When you look at how bad Brazil's defending was this year at the World Cup, these two must be pretty bad to not get in to that squad, but at least Rafael  is still at Manchester United. Fabio on the other hand is now at Cardiff City in the Championship. It should have been all so different of course and even as late as Football Manager 2012, Fabio was still turning into a world beater.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM LEFT-BACK
2. YOUR FAVOURITE PLAYER MIGHT BE MISSING BECAUSE THEY FEATURE IN A DIFFERENT POSITION IN THIS VOTE
3. IF YOU SELECT "OTHER" THEN PLEASE POST THE NAME OF YOUR PLAYER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW
4. POST YOUR STORIES AND MEMORIES ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM LEFT-BACK
5. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE MAIN CM/FM BEST XI BLOG POST
6. VOTES FOR ALL POSITIONS CLOSE ON OCTOBER 31, 2014 
7. PLEASE HELP PROMOTE THE VOTE BY POSTING THIS LINK IN FORUMS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA 

Click here to vote for your favourite CM/FM  centre-back

Click here to vote for your favouriteCM/FM  defensive midfielder

CM/FM All-Time Best First XI: Centre Back

If there is one thing that is sure to be missing from Match of the Day this season with no Alan Hansen on the couch, it is that we won't hear someone say that defending is the lost art of football. That is until Martin Keown or Lee Dixon pick up the mantle. Maybe Hansen is right because in the list of players who's names cropped up as CM/FM star defenders there was a fair share of names who any football fan will recognise but they certainly never got to the dizzy heights as predicted in the footy sim. Take Paul Warhurst for example. He is a classic case of the Champ Man developers getting a little over excited over a prospect when they created his profile in Championship Manager 93. Warhurst had just come off an incredible season with Sheffield Wednesday where injuries meant that centre back Warhurst was used in an emergency strikers role and he bagged an incredible 12 goals in as many games. It earned him a transfer to big spending Blackburn Rovers where he ended up playing in defence more than up front anyway, but he never recaptured the sort of form at either end of the pitch which made Rovers cough up £2.7m in the first place. Maybe we should have been suspicious back then of these so-called great players...

Who is the best CM/FM centre back of all time?

After Manchester United's class of 92' took the world of football by storm there was a huge expectancy put on the shoulders of any young Red Devil. When the United U18s emulated the success of David Beckham and co by winning the FA Youth Cup in 1995, big things were expected from John Curtis. If you could sign him for your team in Championship Manager 97/98 he'd be a rock at the heart of your defence. After a handul of appearances for United Graeme Souness took him to Blackburn but it was all downhill from there as Curtis became a bit of a journeyman. Another centre back star from CM 97/98 was Teddy Lucic but the Swedish international struggled outside of his homeland despite spells in England and Germany.

A big name in the world of European football but an even bigger name in the world of Champ Man was Philippe Mexès. Granted the French international has had a decent career and has turned out for both Roma and Milan in the last decade, but he has come nowhere near to the teenage superstar we all tried to buy from Auxerre in CM 99/00.

And the same can be said for Kevin Hofland. The Dutch defender was immense if you could sign him from PSV Eindhoven, but in real life Hofland's career saw him play for a poor Wolfsburg team in Germany and then return to Holland with Feyenoord. He is now at the end of his career playing in the mighty Cypriot league for AEK Larnaca and has only ever earned seven caps for The Netherlands.

Championship Manager 01/02 provide a whopping four names for this list. Taribo West had spells at both Milan and Inter but didn't exactly have the most amazing stats at the start of the game when you could snap him up on a free transfer, but that didn't stop most players taking a punt and watching him boss your defence and develop into a world beater, with green dreads and all.

 

Then you had Assane N'Diaye, Tieme Klompe and Ibrahim Said as impressive options to choose to partner West at the back. Senegal defender N'Diaye never fulfilled his in-game potential and sadly passed away in 2008 from illness at the age of 33. Klompe played out his career in the Eredivisie and Said's career highlight was a loan move to Everton in 2003.

Fredrik Risp and Steven Taylor both feature as star defenders in Championship Manager 4. Risp travelled around some of the European minor leagues in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, while Taylor has remained loyal to Newcastle United but never quite reach international captaincy standard as he did in CM4.

Two players I remember fondly who would often form a long-standing partnership in my Championship Manager 03/04 game would be Tomas Hubschman and Martin Albrechtsen. I think the guys at Sports Interactive have a bit of a club crush on Shakhtar Donetsk as Hubschman is just one of many players from the Ukrainian Premier League outfit who was predicted to have a better career than he actually did. Albrechtsen spent four seasons at West Brom but these days he is playing in his native of Denmark for Brondy.

Breno is an interesting story because he could have well lived up to his Football Manager 2008 fame had he not got himself sentenced to nearly four years in prison for arson. After 13 months he was released and Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola brought him back to the club to work with the youth teams.

England fans probably thought they had found the next Tony Adams or John Terry if they signed Mark Beevers from Sheffield Wednesday in Football Manager 2009. Instead the 24-year-old is now at Millwall in the Championship instead of playing Champions League football.

If Mamadou Sakho had lived up to his Football Manager billing then Liverpool might just have won the Premier League last year. Diehard CM/FM fans will know all about Sakho who started to appear in the game from around FM10 onwards. It would not be cheap to buy the teenager from PSG but it was always money well spent. It probably says a lot that PSG were happy to sell him to the Anfield club in real life.

Kyriakos Papadopoulos completes the list of defenders. The player from Greece is currently playing for Schalke 04 in the Bundesliga and was recently linked with a move to Liverpool which would see him link up with fellow CM/FM superstar Sakho in a partnership than would have the Football Manager community drooling.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM CENTRE BACK
2. YOUR FAVOURITE PLAYER MIGHT BE MISSING BECAUSE THEY FEATURE IN A DIFFERENT POSITION IN THIS VOTE
3. IF YOU SELECT "OTHER" THEN PLEASE POST THE NAME OF YOUR PLAYER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW
4. POST YOUR STORIES AND MEMORIES ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM CENTRE BACK
5. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE MAIN CM/FM BEST XI BLOG POST
6. VOTES FOR ALL POSITIONS CLOSE ON OCTOBER 31, 2014 
7. PLEASE HELP PROMOTE THE VOTE BY POSTING THIS LINK IN FORUMS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA  

Click here to vote for your favourite CM/FM right-back

Click here to vote for your favouriteCM/FM  left-back

CM/FM All-Time Best First XI: Right-Back

A decent right-back isn't the easiest thing to come by. Have a think back over the last 10 years and try to name 10 truly world class right-backs. Cafu, Lillian Thuram, Gary Neville, Javier Zanetti... Well, that's where I get stumped! So when you found a fantastic young player to fill in on the right side of your defence for many years to come, you'd find yourself excited as a Gary Neville commentating on a Fernando Torres Champions League semi-final goal. I struggled to find any players from the early years of the game who jumped out at me. That is until I got to Championship Manager 97/98 and found my first CM/FM legend for this list, but it was a CM/FM legend worth the wait. Michael 'Mike' Duff could be snapped up from lowly Cheltenham Town and would slip into top-flight football with the greatest of ease. However, in real-life Duff has spent the last 10 years playing for Burnley and made just 11 appearances in the Premier League the last time they were promoted. He'll be hoping to get a few more games under his belt this season for the newly promoted side after being a mainstay in last season's Championship promotion side.

Who is the best CM/FM right-back of all time?

Carl Laurie is a name I remember extremely well who first popped up around Championship Manager 99/00. It wouldn't be a surprise to see Laurie turn out for the likes of Real Madrid and his club Crewe Alexandra were more than happy to do business for the player. But it didn't quite work out for Laurie who ended up at non-league outfit Northwich Victoria after a six-year spell at Gresty Road, but spent just one season there before quitting football to get a real job! He is now a director at mobile phone firm Lily Management Ltd.

The following season Laurie was still a powerhouse in the game but if you couldn't snap him up then Hannu Tihinen was an equally good investment. The Finnish defender had a decent international career but the highest level he reached was an eight-game loan period with West Ham in 2001.

RKC Waalwijk youngster Michael Lamey is next up from the CM 01/02 version. The Dutchman has never quite lived up to the hype despite stints with PSV Eindhoven and - wait for it - Leicester City, and now finds himself without a club after being released by RKC Waalwijk following a second spell with the club which ended in relegation from the Eredivisie. As they say, never go back.

The next entrant is from Championship Manager 4 and will be familiar to fans of the Premier League. Stuart Parnaby of Middlesbrough was a player who was touted to have a great career ahead of him and would be the player to fill that right-back spot for many of us. But at the age of 32, Parnaby has only ever made 161 league appearances and starts next season at Hartlepool United.

Darijo Srna was able to operate in right midfield or at right-back but it seems that most gamers used him in an attacking wing back role. Srna is a strange one as he has been highly regarded in many versions of the game since he became a prominent transfer target for most players in Championship Manager 03/04. But despite the fact his Champ Man CV probably features the likes of Manchester United, Juventus and Barcelona, he has remained at Shakhtar Donetsk for the past decade.

My sentimental vote goes to the man who first featured around Football Manager 2005. Billy Jones is another product of the Crewe Alexandra talent conveyor belt and could operate right across the back four or in midfield. As any gamer who managed Everton in FM05 will tell you, we operated on a shoe-string transfer budget and ploughing the £2m you probably had into the versatile Jones was money well spent. It hasn't quite worked out for him yet despite a fairly successful spell with West Brom and he'll start next season with Sunderland.

But if my sentimental vote goes to Jones, then my cast iron vote would probably go to the man known as Anthony Vanden Borre. The original AVB was a beast when he first appeared in Football Manager 2005 and it didn't take long for gamers to raid Anderlecht for both Vanden Borre and another teenager by the name of Vincent Kompany. But while Kompany has gone on to lead Manchester City to two Premier League titles in real life, the best Vanden Borre achieved was playing for Portsmouth. Yeah, that Portsmouth!

Next to step forward is Greg Halford who appeared in Football Manager 2007. Halford rose to prominence after impressing at Colchester United and the CM/FM community took notice. He fast became a highly sought after player. Reading took a punt in real life but it didn't work out and Halford then spent time as a bit of a journeyman going out on loan before he ended up at - uh oh - Portsmouth! He has since found some stability playing at Nottingham Forest since 2012.

Two Italian players feature next from the FM08 and FM09 versions. Lorenzo De Silvestri and Davide Santon are two players who have certainly fallen foul to the Champ Man curse. Italy must have thought they were spoilt for choice for the next 10 years at right-back, and De Silvestri made his international debut in 2010 but has only ever played for his country once more since then. Santon has made a few more international appearances with eight, but the fact he went from Inter to Newcastle United pretty much tells its own story.

And if you couldn't get Santon to sign for your team in Football Manager 2009, then you could always try to see if Daniel Opare would be willing to leave Real Madrid. Things didn't work out for Opare in Spain as he only managed a handful of appearances in Real's second team Castilla before he left to rebuild his career in Belgium with Standard Liege. Next season he'll be playing for Portuguese champions Porto.

The final two players on the list come from Football Manager 2011 and could well yet turn out to be genuine global superstars. Croatian Šime Vrsaljko and Brazilian Romario (no, not that one) are the best of the latest generation of CM/FM wonderkids. Vrsaljko is performing better at the moment as he was a regular for Italian side Genoa last season, but Romario is yet to make a league appearance for German outfit 1899 Hoffenheim since his 2013 transfer.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM RIGHT-BACK
2. YOUR FAVOURITE PLAYER MIGHT BE MISSING BECAUSE THEY FEATURE IN A DIFFERENT POSITION IN THIS VOTE
3. IF YOU SELECT "OTHER" THEN PLEASE POST THE NAME OF YOUR PLAYER IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW
4. POST YOUR STORIES AND MEMORIES ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM RIGHT-BACK
5. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE MAIN CM/FM BEST XI BLOG POST
6. VOTES FOR ALL POSITIONS CLOSE ON OCTOBER 31, 2014 
7. PLEASE HELP PROMOTE THE VOTE BY POSTING THIS LINK IN FORUMS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA  

Click here to vote for your favourite CM/FM goalkeeper

Click here to vote for your favouriteCM/FM centre-back