Perfect for when you’re on the bench?

Championship Manager 2011 For iPad : Once the preserve of those willing to spend hundreds fine-tuning their home PCs with the latest RAM modules and processors, these days even a pleasant walk in the countryside can harbour the more sedate thrills of football management. Predictably enough, such a development offers both pros and cons.

Firstly, the trend in recent years has been to follow avenues of increasingly excruciating detail. Labyrinthine training regimes, manager conversations — that kind of thing. Lacking the processing grunt to deal with the minuscule amount of difference such interaction would have made to proceedings in any case, this is very much a trading card game in disguise. In fact, contract talks aren’t even handled by players directly, as the chairman is left to thrash out deals in some board room with each player’s agent. And perhaps some kind of whip. The distraction of press conferences aside then, Championship Manager 2011 offers a welcome release from everyday drudgery.

Sadly though, various issues crop up to spoil the experience, precisely because space, both physical and digital, proves limited.

Firstly, players are restricted to first team action only, preventing you from delving into youth development or international management. Secondly, as transfers have the aforementioned degree of indirectness to their structure, negotiations must be entered into in single file lest your team sign four left-backs by accident. The transfer market too, seems a little unrealistic; all but the most prized assets can be tempted away from their respective clubs for easily affordable rates. Players hoping to accumulate more than a single season of play, too, may be disappointed at the prevalence of crashes after that time period.

Other, smaller complaints may focus upon the insistence BG5 shows on rating players upon their revised percentage scale, rather than something more memorable. Lacking any facility to compare players directly, you’re often forced into superhuman feats of memory. Or perhaps an inability to ignore email messages. Regardless, the fact CM 2011 has secured second place in handheld management, besides that undertaken at home, is evident on this showing.

Rating 3 Star