Football Manager Handheld 2010 (iPhone)

It’s called FM 2010 in the App Store, but the title screen says Football Manager Handheld 2010, so I’m going with that. It’s rather more descriptive, after all.

Well, you know what you’re getting. It’s Football Manager… on the iPhone. Cut down from the PC version, but very familiar to anyone who’s played the PSP version, the only really important thing is the interface. First impressions suggest that it’ll be fine once you get used to it, but it’s unfamiliar and not especially intuitive.

(There’s a separate manual app that you can download for free – I’ve had to refer to it a couple of times.)

Still, I’ve managed to play a few games, change my formation and change around my squad, so it seems to be workable.

I took over Oxford United because there’s no random option that I could see. (Incidentally, there’s also no obvious way to get team info before you select them, which is a shame.) They come with a default 4-3-3 formation, so I left that alone for my first friendly match.

We lost 3-0.

So I decided to go back to the old standby of 4-4-2 for the next friendly.

We lost 3-0.

The score didn't stay 0-0 for long.

Hmm. I stuck with 4-4-2 for the next match, but focused on attacking.

We were down to 3-0 within twenty minutes. Oof.

Hooray for Norville!

Near the end of the game, though, there was a glimmer of hope as Jason Norville scored a late consolation goal. That’s something. I think I need to see how things go at the start of the season and see if I can work out a way to get the best from my squad. I’m a firm believer that midfield is what counts in football so I’m going to concentrate on that. There’s still time to bring people in.

Either that or I’ll look for a new job.