	LMA Manager 2007
	Developer: Codemasters Publisher: Codemasters Release Date: Out Now Players: 1-2	Words By:
LMA used to be the best footie management sim on consoles but now the big guns from the pc have came to consoles so LMA Manager 2007 would have to be very good indeed to tempt wannabe Mourinhos into buying it. LMA 2007 lets you manage any team from England (with the championship, league 1 and league 2 teams licensed), Spain, Italy, Germany, France Holland and Portugal (complete with all domestic cups for all leagues) or you can create our own Fantasy Team using whatever players you like. If you’re hooked up to Xbox Live you can download the September 2006 squad lists so that every squad will be updated with all the transfer deadline day changes. Now you’ll create your lovely self in 3D form with a wealth of player creation options, and choose if you’ll be a smart-suited manager or a tracksuit wearing one. Once you begin you’ll be presented with a baffling amount of menus and sub menus. You’ll have menus for Squad, Training, Laptop (messages and schedules), Information, Transfer Market, Finance, Stadium, Records and calendar. All of the menus have 2-9 sub menus, and are navigated via the left and right bumper buttons while the sub menus are mapped to the left and right triggers. It’s tricky at first but you’ll soon get the hang of it. I’m sure you’ll soon want to visit the transfer market to strengthen your squad, which brings me to the first problem I’ve had got with LMA 2007: CRAZY TRANSFERS. Some of the transfers that have gone on are insane, Chelsea sold Terry to Liverpool, Cech to Arsenal, Drogba, Wright-Phillips & Essien to Man United while United sold Ferdinand and Carrick to Chelsea. Those are just a few of the crazy transfers that make the bigger teams practically unrecognisable from their real life counterparts. So anyway, after we’ve made some transfers it’s time to sort the tactics out. There are a few formations to choose from (apart from one I wanted 4-5-1) and you can only slightly adjust them by moving certain positions slightly. Other tactical changes that can be made are how high up the pitch you want your defence, how wide you play and how direct etc. You can also choose your free kick takers, playermaker, corner takers and penalty taker. So you’ve got your team ready for your first game in charge, you’ll have to choices here: Watch the match or don’t watch. Let’s chose watch the match. Here’s the introduction to the match engine certainly looks better than the moving dots of ‘Championship Manager’ - or does it. I found the match engine to be so unlike football it’s untrue, the ball goes through players, players don’t run into space because they’d rather turn towards 3 defenders, goals seem to be 70% rebounds off the keeper, 20% headers and 10% against the keeper. It turns our beautiful game into the ugly game. But oddly enough you’ll get used to it because I just click the “fast match” button and whizz - it goes a lot fast and actually looks half like football. The real advantage of watch the game is of course the ability to make changes (where as the computer would make those for you if you chose not to watch). You’ll have all the same options as you do while you’re not playing a match but you’ll also have the ability to change tactics on the fly without going through menus during the game, clicking the triggers will make your manager shout out for example ‘everyone up’ would switch you to 4-3-3 to take that extra gamble in the last few minutes which I think is a neat touch. Post match you can watch highlights (complete with dodgy commentary) or hear Gary Linker and Alan Hansen talk about your match (which I only found half way through a season) but it really adds nothing to the game. LMA2007 also has an Xbox live leaderboard, which you can upload your end of season stats to and compete with your friends. Also you and a friend can take control of to separate teams on the same 360 which is a cool feature to have. Graphically like all manager games you’ll mostly be staring at text and menus but they are nicely laid out and clear to see especially on an HD TV. The match engine seems to be PS2 or Xbox quality, just higher res so nothing special. You won’t be hearing much sound because it’s just bleeps ‘n clicks while in the menus. Like I mentioned earlier the commentary is pretty poor while watching highlights and Gary & Alan’s tend to comment on nothing but the obvious (yes I know I won the match and I’m in the top six)… Overall I’ve played better management games but LMA2007 does seem to suck me in from time to time, it’s a shame about the dodgy transfers that go on and the equally dodgy match engine. An ok update, but not that great

Best Bits
- Lots of teams/leagues
- Lots to do

Worst Bits
- Daft transfers
- Match engine
- There are better management games around


by: SteMacD