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

A good left peg is a hard thing to find, but when you find it you should cherish it forever. Or something like that, but maybe in a tone which makes me sound a little less weird and obsessive about Football Manager. But I digress. The problem with the AMC/R/L role is that there were so many brilliant players who were inter-changeable across your midfield attack that I’m sure some of the players I’ve already listed in the AMR and AMC votes were the guys you selected to drive your attack down that left flank. But in saying that I believe I’ve put together a list worthy of that left wing position. Way back with Championship Manager 93 there were three stand-out players for me – Joey Beauchamp, Scott Oakes and Mark Pembridge. Back when foreign players in England were still in the minority, signing Beauchamp – a player that could operate centrally or on the left – was a bit like signing a foreigner. Well, he sounded French at least, and you could snap him up from Oxford United. In real life he played at West Ham but eventually ended back at Oxford.

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

Oakes was a bit of a legend at Luton Town and it was an FA Cup performance against West Ham back in the 90s that caught everyone’s eye. He was a tricky winger and fulfilled his potential in CM93 but after a move to Sheffield Wednesday in 1996 his career took a bit of a nosedive. Pembridge probably had the most successful career out of the three playing for Derby County, Sheffield Wednesday, Benfica, Everton and Fulham, but in CM93 he had his pick of clubs to play for

Both Simon Davies and Gareth Jellyman have already featured in previous votes so it won't come as a total surprise that the final piece of the Championship Manager 3 jigsaw, Matthew Etherington, is in the list for best left winger.Etherington was meant to be the left winger England were crying out for and in the game he filled that role very comfortably. In real life he faced a gambling addiction which couldn't have helped his career which included spells at Tottenham and West Ham, and now Stoke City.

Leeds United were spending money like it was going out of fashion at the end of the 90s and assembled a fantastic squad, which included a number of promising young players. One of those was Stephen McPhail who fulfilled that potential in Championship Manager 99/00 but it wasn't to be back in the real world. After leaving Leeds his career has largely been spent in the Championship with Barnsley, Cardiff City and Sheffield Wednesday.

There must be something Sports Interactive put in the Swedish water because another couple of great CM/FM stars from that region was Alexander Farnerud and Stefan Ishizaki. In Championship Manager 01/02, both were typical Champ Man Scandinavian bargain buys; Farnerud from Landskrona and Ishizaki from AIK. Spells at Stuttgart and Torino was as good as it got for Farnerud, while Ishizaki played in Sweden and Norway, and is now finishing his career at LA Galaxy.

The main man of Championship Manager 4 was arguably the Finnish wonderkid Mika Ääritalo. Capable of playing in multiple positions in attack, Ääritalo was available on the cheap from TPS Turku. The player was a must-buy as he would create and score goals at ease and remains an iconic name within the CM/FM community. Aston Villa beat off a host of top clubs to sign him in 2003 but in three years he failed to make a single appearance and was shipped back to TPS Turku.

Three great CM/FM left wingers starred in Championship Manager 03/04. First up is Lionel Morgan who you could sign from Wimbledon, then Norwegian superstar Jan Kristiansen was a steal from Esbjerg, and last by by no means least, US teen sensation Freddy Adu from DC United who would most definitely become of the greatest players in the world.

Injury stopped Morgan's career at the age of 21 and he now runs a management company, Infinite Sports Management, with former teammate Jobi McAnuff. Kristiansen spent a couple of seasons with German outfit FC Nürnberg but is now playing in the Danish league. And then we have Adu, who was dubbed the next Pelé at 14, was unable to cope with the media pressure and could only manage a trial at Manchester United and one season with Benfica before he was forced back to the MLS to rebuild his career and is now playing for Bahia in the Brazilian league.

The final two players come from Football Manager 2008. Henri Saivet was touted as the next Thierry Henry in France and if you could stump up enough cash to get Bordeaux to part with their man, then you had a player who could play in attacking roles down both flanks and through the middle. But he never quite reached the levels of va va voom to the point where he has even decided not to pursue playing international football for France and has since turned out a few times for Senegal (the country of his birth).

Pablo Piatti completes the list. The Argentinean winger with an Italian passport could be signed from Estudiantes and would cause most right-backs havoc. Back in the real world Piatti has carved out a decent career in La Liga, first at Almeria and now at Valencia, but with just one international cap to his name he has a long way to go to match his world class Football Manager status.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM LEFT WINGER
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 WINGER
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  attacking midfielder

Click here to vote for your favouriteCM/FM striker

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

What do David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Franck Ribery all have in common? That's right, they are not fit to lace the boots of Kennedy Bakircioglu, Fabio Paim or Mads Jørgensen. Now we’re talking proper AMR’s – Football Manager style. We’re now entering the realm of the attacking players in this part of the vote, which is what we’ve all really been waiting for. Yes, finding an unknown defender like Anthony Vanden Borre was great, but it doesn’t even come close to the levels of excitement you felt when you found that one player who was going to light up your computer screens with assists and goals galore! In Championship Manager 93, I fondly remember Julian Joachim being the main man. His preferred position was up front, but you’re the boss so he’ll play where you want him to dammit and he was equally adapt at playing out wide on the right. In the game you could pick him up from Leicester City and the player I like to describe as the youngest man with the oldest face I’d ever seen could be incredible.

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

Joachim enjoyed spells at Aston Villa, Coventry City and Leeds United in real life, but he was never the player we knew he could be. He's still playing now at 39 for Oadby Town. Exactly, I have no idea either.

Simon Davies is a player Tottenham, Everton and Fulham fans will be familiar with, but fans of Championship Manager 3 will have the fondest memories of the Welsh winger. Alongside his Peterborough teammates Matthew Etherington and Gareth Jellyman, you just had to buy Davies and watch as he became the next Ryan Giggs.The truth is he was probably just on par with Giggy's left arm.

Championship Manager 99/00 delivers us three of arguably the best right wingers ever to have graced our computer screens. Mads Jørgensen, Sharbel Touma and Kennedy Bakircioglu are names that if you don’t know, quite frankly you are not a fan of the game! All could be snapped up for peanuts in the grand scheme of things and all three would deliver you assists on a plate. Jørgensen spent his whole career in Scandanavia, Touma spent time in the Eredivisie and Bundesliga, and Bakircioglu I simply have a bit of a man crush on. Oh, and he spent some time at Ajax but he was never the player I bought from Hammarby all those years ago. Ah, good times…

There are some players who you won’t believe have Premier League medals in real life. Luke Chadwick would be one of those players, but if you went by his CM 00/01 career then it wouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Chadwick was another one of those Manchester United players we expected to be great because Scholes and co had been amazing 10 years earlier. Unfortunately for Chadwick he floated around at various clubs at home before a five-year stint at MK Dons. He’s now playing for Cambridge United.

Three players make the list from Championship Manager 01/02. Richie Partridge was meant to be the next big thing at Liverpool, Julius Aghahowa is another one of those CM/FM players who are given super human powers simply due to the fact they play for Shakhtar Donetsk, and Stefan Selakovic was a classic Champ Man Swedish superstar. None were able to achieve the glory they achieved when we were managing them. Partridge never kicked a ball in a league game for Liverpool and has fallen down the footballing ladder and is now at Airbus UK Broughton, Aghahowa spent a season at Wigan before finishing his career back at Shakhtar where he presumably regained his super powers, and Selakovic only managed three seasons outside of Sweden with Heerenveen in Holland.

Fabio Paim is a classic Championship Manager wonderkid. He was just 14 at the start of Championship Manager 4 and was an essential free signing that would see him become a first team regular by 16. Luis Felipe Scolari signed Paim on loan when he first arrived at Chelsea, but maybe we should have taken that as some sort of sign seeing as how Scolari’s tenure at the Bridge ended up. Sadly for Paim, at 26 he has only ever made a handful of appearances for the 13 clubs he has played for and alas has a touch of the Sonny Pike’s about him.

Daniel Braaten was the man we turned to in Championship Manager 03/04. He had everything you wanted from a wide man – pace, skill, and the ability to dribble past his 2D opponents at ease. In real life he has travelled about and played in Norway (Rosenborg), England (Bolton Wanderers), France (Toulouse), and now in Sweden (F.C. Copenhagen).

The next player on the list is Sherman Cardenas who for the life of me I can’t remember as a gamer, but I found a whole lot of love for him online. I am now starting to wonder what the hell I was doing in 2007 because to have missed out on a player of this quality seems criminal. He was that good in the game that even Tim Vickery wrote in his column on the BBC that the Sherminator (as fans like to call him) suffered as a result of the expectation put on his shoulders and cited the high stats on FM as an example. Despite early promise, Cardenas continues to ply his trade in the Colombian league.

In Football Manager 2008, Alex Teixeira was the Brazilian left winger you would almost always try to raid Vasco for. I am guessing that the board over at Shakhtar Donetsk were aware of his FM potential and therefore snapped him up in real life in 2010, and guess what – he’s not as good as we thought.

The final two players are young Dutch stars who could yet live up to their FM names. Georginio Wijnaldum you could argue is on his way after appearing for the Dutch at the World Cup, but he still has some way to go before he becomes that kid with the dreads that we had to sign in FM09. And we all tried to sign Luc Castaignos in FM10 from Feyenoord and it even looked as though he could be about to make that step-up when Inter bought him in 2011. But it didn’t work out and he was back in the Eredivisie a season later with Twente.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM RIGHT WINGER 
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 WINGER
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  DMC/CM

Click here to vote for your favourite CM/FM attacking midfielder