Club Football - The Manager was one of the many soccer manager games made in United Kingdom that concentrated only on the English league. You can choose any of the lowest professional division clubs and build its might through training and transfers until you will reach the top. Since there were so many similar games it was hard to make a mark in history, especially after Championship Manager created a completely new standard of the genre. Unfortunately, despite some interesting details, Club Football - The Manager wasn’t a revolutionary game. On one hand we had decent graphic side of the game, we had some good managerial options (players contracts, your own contract with the club, stadium expansion, transfer negotiations), but still it was all about the match engine when it comes to rating soccer manager games and this title, among others, did not came up with good solution for match engine.
The match events are presented through short text description, while goal attempts are presented in form of simple animations (solution used in many games), but in Club Football - The Manager had one important flaw: lack of personal statistics for the players. All we get is number of games and number of goals scored, which is hardly enough to set up the team for single match, not to mention to make decisions in whole season. After the game we get the bars presenting player performance and remaining fitness, which was nice, but then again there are no names next to the bars (only shirt number, and what is more they are not individual numbers) and there are no ratings from the games, so we have to guess or have brilliant memory to make decisions when it comes to team selection or transfers.
Overall a typical British soccer manager with decent graphics side and number of options available, but at the same time the match engine and lack of statistics made this game a forgettable one.
Club Football - The Manager gameplay video
