Championship Manager 4 was improved version of classic Championship Manager with better quality of the interface, larger database of clubs and nations and several other new features. One of the most important bits was the new match view - 2D top-down with players represented by round elements containing their shirt number and in colours of their team. I know it sounds silly, but in fact that view was very efficient - on one hand you can spot the gaps in your formations, you can watch how opponents build their attacks and at the same time which of your players is in wrong place or is too slow.
The interface was a mixture of new elements and the classic two column list of players, which wasn’t such a good idea, especially since if you played on large monitor the name of a player and his parameters (f.e. position) were quite far apart. List of the parameters was extended, available options list was extended, the youth team was available (but no the reserve team, which was sometimes a problem in big club where you have 40-50 players available).
Overall Championship Manager 4 was evolution from previous games, not yet close to being perfect and at the same time the amount of time needed to play all the background matches became a problem.
