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

Stjarnan FC - the kings of goal celebrations!

Goal celebrations have come a long way since the days of the Alan Shearer one hand up in the air routine, but Icelandic football club Stjarnan FC have taken it to a whole another level!

This collection of their best goal celebrations is quite simply awesome. They clearly put as much effort into their celebration routines as they do on their tactics on the training ground. Wait until you get to The Birth - pure genius...

CM/FM All-Time Best First XI: Defensive Midfielder/Central Midfielder

So this category states defensive midfielder but includes players who played in the central midfield role as well as oppose to attacking midfielders who we'll get to later, got it? Good! In which case we'll start with Championship Manager 93 and two players who were very much central midfielders in Austin Berkley and Mark Draper. Berkley was with Swindon who happened to be in the Premier League back in 93/94 (yes, it was that long ago!) while Notts County were banging on the play-off door in the league previously known as Division One. If memory serves me correctly, it was Draper who was more expensive of the two, which in real world terms is probably fair enough seeing as Berkley only ever made one league appearance for Swindon before dropping down the leagues with the likes of Shrewsbury and Barnet, while Draper at least turned out for Leicester City and Aston Villa. Tommy Svindal Larsen was called an 'absolute beast' in an article in The Guardian newspaper back in 2008 which looked at six of the greatest names from the CM/FM series. Larsen popped up in Championship Manager 97/98 and was an steal from Norwegian club Stabaek. A must-buy for most computer managers but in the real world the best he managed was a four-season spell with FC Nürnberg.

Who is the best CM/FM DMC/CM of all time?

The legend of Seth Johnson couldn't be more different when comparing his computer generated career and his actual career. In both universes he was regarded as a huge prospect; the main difference being when you forked out a big transfer fee and high wages in CM 99/00 he was awesome at the heart of your midfield, but when he signed for Leeds United it didn't quite work out like that.The story goes that Johnson's agent went in with the agenda to secure his man a maximum of £13,000 per week but when free-spending Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale offered £30,000 - which rendered Johnson and his agent stunned - Ridsdale upped the offer to £37,000 as his final offer believing their silence was a negotiation tactic. And that is probably the story Johnson is best known for as his time at Leeds didn't work out and he was eventually shipped back to Derby County.

Another legend from Championship Manager 99/00 is Dean Keates. Described by footballfancast.com as an 'all-action midfield dynamo a la Steven Gerrard', Keates was a real bargain from Wallsall. Today Keates can be found playing in the Blue Square Premier for Wrexham where he has been for the past four years.

We move to Championship Manager 01/02 next and Liverpool prodigy John Welsh, a player who could be the linchpin of your midfield for many years to come. It wasn't always easy to get Liverpool to part with their wonderkid, which wasn't the case in real life where he was sold to Hull City after just four league appearances for the Merseyside club and can now be seen down at Deepdale with Preston North End.

Mark Kerr was the Scottish legend who gave a nation hope that they had found a new Graeme Souness. For a teenager, his stats for teamwork, determination, and workrate were remarkably high at the start of the CM4 version and you'd have been a fool not to snap him up from Falkirk. But Kerr never reached his CM potential and is probably best known for that dreadful backpass in the Scottish Cup Final against Rangers.

In CM 03/04 Fredy Williams Thompson put Guatemala on the football map as he would boss any midfield in any league should you opt to send your scouts to Central America. In the real world, no one took a punt on Thompson which I guess means no club was willing to send their scouts south of Mexico. Either that or he was actually really crap.

Two real Football Manager gems in my eyes are up next. Benedict Vilakazi is a player I always made a swoop for along with his Orland Pirates teammate Lebohang Mokoena. You could snap the pair up (work permits permitting) for less than £2m and have your defensive and offensive options sorted out for a decade. Vilakazi's career high was a brief spell in Sweden with AaB Aalborg, but now he is at Botswana Meat Commission. I have no idea if that is a football club or a supermarket.

Fredy Guarin also featured in FM05 and was an awesome player at £1m from Envigado. In my opinion Guarin is on the verge of tipping the scales in terms of losing the tag of an amazing FM player who hasn't lived up to his in-game performances. He was part of a very good Colombia squad at the World Cup and rumours have circulated recently that he could be leaving Inter for Serie A champions Juventus. But for now, we'll keep him in this vote - just!

Three players make the list from FM06 with Steffen Hofmann, Nik Besagno and Hedwiges Maduro. Hoffman seems a popular choice on FM community forums such as The Dugout, and Besagno was an impressive youngster you could pluck from the MLS in the United States. Maduro is my pick as I remember taking a gamble on him from Ajax for around £8m and he didn't let me down. In the real world? Hoffman started at the top with Bayern Munich but ended up with Rapid Vienna, Besagno has never left the US and Maduro had a decent career in La Liga with Valencia and Sevilla but is now in the Greek league with PAOK.

Another double entry and another couple of nearly men who could yet prove us all wrong. In Football Manager 2008 everyone went after Boca Juniors Éver Banega who was available at a very fair price for a player of his quality. And in the same game we started to see the emergence of Miguel Veloso, who you would try to sign in a double swoop at Sporting CP alongside teammate João Moutinho. Banega struggled to make an impact at Valencia which didn't help when he did a Brian Harvey and managed to run himself over in 2012, breaking his ankle and leg in the process. Velos hasn't quite kicked on like Moutinho has and is now playing for Dynamo Kiev in Ukraine. It could have been all so different had Bolton been able to come up with the funds to buy him in 2009..

The last player on this is Lorenzo Crisetig from FM10; a player who still does great things in the proceeding versions of the game but the 21-year-old is still to make a league appearance for Inter and keeps getting farmed out on loan. In Football Manager he is a regular for Real Madrid already.

HOUSE RULES
1. PLEASE VOTE ONCE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CM/FM DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER/CENTRAL MIDFIELDER

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 DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER/CENTRAL MIDFIELDER
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  left-back

Click here to vote for your favourite CM/FM right winger

50 Things that happened in the 90s that will make you feel old! Part 1...

It pains me that I now work with people who were born in the 1990s. It means that no matter how much I fight it, I am now old. When I was doing my GCSE's, they were pooping in their nappies.It's a sobering thought, but what makes it worse is their blank faces when you mention something that happened in that golden decade. Suddenly you have become your parents and the world as you know it is over.

Why should I be the only one to suffer? If I am going to feel old, then you are going to feel my pain with me. So sit back and enjoy this trip down memory lane and when you're done reach for the zimmer frame and accept that it's all downhill from here...

50. The Box - the music channel we controlled...
Other than MTV The Box was the only other music channel. You'd sit there for ages hoping the three numbers being punched in the bottom of the screen by users around the country was for Slam by Onyx but more often than not it would be that greasy Mexican dude Rico Suave.

49. Back in the day Beyoncé was not the Goddess she is today...
Long before she was Crazy In Love she looked like this. And who bloody remembered that there were four of them in the old days?!

48. Gillian Anderson was the hottest woman in the world...
Twenty-one years ago Dana Scully partnered up with Fox Mulder to solve supernatural crimes in the X Files. Then she got her kit off in FHM in 1996 and we all started looking at her a little differently.

47. Two decades ago PJ was blinded...
Long before Ant and Dec became the multiple Bafta award winning duo they are today, we knew them as PJ & Duncan and it was back in 1992 that this scene shocked a nation in Biker Grove.

46. This is the kid from Jerry Maguire...
Jonathan Lipnicki told us all in 1996 that the human head weighs eight pounds. Now he looks like he could rip your head off.

45. Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with this woman...
The US President denied having an affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 and tabloids went wild over what he did or didn't do with a cigar.

44. It was 22 years ago that we were serious as cancer when we said Rhythm is Dancer...
In 1992 our charts featured music from German dance groups like Snap! who topped the hit parade (that's what we called in then) with this classic tune!

 
43. The Nirvana baby looks like the guy out of Busted...
And this year he turns 23 which means he is another one of those annoying people born in the 90s here to torture us! The album Nevermind was released in 1991.

42. Bevis & Butthead are now pushing 40...
It was back in 1993 that the two teenage delinquents first started watching music videos on MTV which means by now they are both approaching midlife.

41. 15 years ago we were all screaming "Whassup" down the phone...
Budweiser's famous slogan aired in 1999 and had everyone poking their tongues out and greeting people like a demented frog. True.

40. We didn't have a clue when it came to fashion...

Come on, hands up - at the start of the 90s we all owned one of these bad boys. In 2012 the shell suit was voted the worst fashion item of the last 50 years.

39. For 20 years we've been hoping Eva Herzigova would say "Hello boys" to us...
One of the most iconic advertisements ever and still stands the test of time (in more ways than one) caused it's fair share of car crashes when this billboard started to appear in 1994.

38. Matthew Le Tissier scored goals like this but it wasn't enough to play for England...

In the mid 90s we were used to seeing the Southampton legend regularly score goals that Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo would be proud of. Not the England manager though, he preferred Carlton Palmer.

37. Oh, and Le Tiss shagged Marylin from Home & Away...
Long before Emily Symons bounced into Emmerdale, she captured our hearts as ditzy Marylin with the big boobs in the Aussie soap 25 years ago! But what were the writers thinking when they hooked her up with  Donald Fisher aka Flat Head?!

 
36. Our Friends have got a little older...
Friends was a worldwide smash but was it really 20 years ago that they first graced our TV screens? No wonder they look a little older these days!

35. K-Ci denied he was going to marry Mary J. Blige on The Word...
Back in 1995 Jodeci were huge and when this interview went out on Channel 4's The Word, Mary J. Blige was none too happy.

34. And this is what Jodeci look like today...
If ever their was a poster campaign boy for not taking drugs then K-Ci is it. It's fair to say that the years have not been kind to the Jodeci boys.

33. Kids from our favourite TV shows are now making sex tapes...
When Elizabeth Berkley got her kit off in Showgirls we all desperately hoped that Kelly Kapowski from our favourite 90s show Saved By The Bell might follow suit one day. We 100% hoped it would be Screech, who is now 37 by the way!

32. Super Mario World rocked our world 24 years ago...
In a world where gamers play against other players from around the world it is hard to believe that we ever got so excited about graphics like this!

31. Oasis and Blur went head to head in the battle of Britpop two decades ago...
Was it really 19 years ago that two of the UK's finest ever bands released Country House and Roll With It in the same week to fight it out for the number one spot?

30. You probably owned a pair of Reebok Pumps...
And nearly 25 years later you still don't have a clue what the pump is actually for other than it looked cool and cost a fortune. If only we'd just stuck with the Air Jordan's.

29. Kevin the teenager is now probably married...
Harry Enfield's creation had all of our parents giving us knowing looks every time Kevin sulked his way on to TV in the early 90s.

 

28. Google was born in 1998...
Which basically means we actually lived through a period when if we wanted to find something out we had three options: 1) The Yellow Pages 2) Call directory enquiries or 3) Get off our lazy arses!

27. Hollyoaks is 20 years old next year...
And Nick Pritchard who has played Tony Hutchinson since the first episode in 1995 turns 40 next year! He is officially a modern-day Ian Beale.

26. Twenty-four years later and if you still know every word...
Will Smith was 21-years-old when The Fresh Prince of Bel Air first appeared in 1990s and the tune has become as iconic as Cheers was for your parents. That's right, you're now in that place.

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

The BIGGEST Jäger Train in the World

Jägerbomb's have become a fairly big part of any lads holiday or when on a stag do somewhere in Eastern Europe, but when you're next in a bar and one of your buddy's says line them up - be careful what you wish for!

This video has been doing the rounds for the past couple of weeks and all I can say is that I salute the people who took the time to come up with this wonderful creation. Watch this video and remember what you see, because I'm guessing after you have polished all of these off you won't remember much else!

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.

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