Welcome to another long overdue edition of Champ Man & Me. For this edition, I’m joined by Ross from the award winning Man on the Post podcast.

Thanks for joining me, Ross. Your podcast Man on the Post recently celebrated it’s 4th birthday. How did it all start?

I had been an avid listener of mainly football podcasts for a few years before we began, mainly The Football Ramble and Football Weekly. In the early days of the Ramble they used to all record from one of the hosts kitchen so I figured Skype could be our kitchen so I sent out a message on facebook asking if any of my friends were interested in joining me for a weekly football podcast all they’d need is skype and a way to communicate with me through it. My first response was from Adam who i had played sunday league football with a few years previous before he moved to the big smoke of London, I had interest from my friend Greg who i worked with and also a guy called James who I had met through the ill-fated Football Manager Live experience. Add to that Greg’s friend Tom and we were set for our first show, it was incredibly rough and my editing and producing were so poor it almost hurts my ears to go back and listen to episode one now.

How would you summarise the podcast for anybody looking for a new podcast to get stuck into?

I like to think of the Podcast as a conversation you might hear in a pub from a bunch of loud slightly obnoxious guys who kind of know what they are going on about. On a weekly basis we have two shows a week now, one on a sunday rounding up the weekend and one on a thursday previewing the action. Both have different crews so if you listen to every episode you always get to hear differing voices.

Like so many football fans, you’ve played a bit of CM/FM in your time. Do you remember how you first got into the series?

I remember vividly getting money in a homemade gift envelope for xmas probably 1996, we had bought our first monster of a home pc that previous year and I was dying to purchase the full copy of CM 2 after playing the 6 month demo from the front of a PC magazine. I distinctly remember going to pc world with my dad and buying the gorgeous green box and telling my dad that we had to go home right now so I could play.

Obviously, we’re big fans of CM9798. Do you have any memories of this version in particular?

CM 97/98 was not a vintage year for my team of choice – Leeds United, we were a year or two away from being one of the rich clubs with a wealth of talent to pick your team from I do remember always having high hope for central midfielder Tommy Knarvik, him and Mark Kerr would regularly boss games for me in the centre of the pitch

Everybody has a favourite CM/FM story – let’s hear yours!

My favourite story has to be a save I had with Salisbury City. It came off of the back of one of the challenges from an FM message board where you start a new game and have all the available English leagues open, go on holiday for a season and then take over one of the brand new clubs in either the conference north or south who get added to the game at the end of the first season, the aim of the challenge as with any FM challenge is world domination and whilst I didn’t quite manage that I did end up getting to the Premier League and establishing them as a solid mid table club in the mould of a Stoke City it took roughly 14/15 season with a fair few of them ending with me thinking why am I even doing this to myself.

What do you think of where the series is now? Do you like the in-depth nature of say FM16 compared to the pick up and play of the earlier titles?

It took me a while to really get back in to the series after the switch from CM to FM but the more and more indepth it has become the more I have gained enjoyment from it, the thrill of searching out the next wonderkid and developing them to be a world beater is something I still get a kick out of even after playing every iteration since 2, being a dad now though I do find time to play limited but then thats why its always good to have 2 and 97/98 installed for when you just need that quick fix.

You mentioned Leeds are your team. Are you happy with their season so far?

Sadly this season has been just as much of a disaster as the previous 15 if I’m honest, bar one season in league 1 under Simon Grayson its been pretty tough going being a Leeds fan since 2002.

Back to the podcast, do you have any aims/targets for the next year? How do you manage to keep the content fresh after 4 years?

Well in somewhat of a shock we won the best sports & recreation podcast award at last years UK Podcast Awards, so our aim for this year is to retain our crown. In terms of keeping it fresh Football does that for us, we recently looked back at some of the events in the previous 4 years of us doing the show and at least once or twice a season some one (normally Alan Pardew) does something mental that we can talk about and make jokes on for weeks. Football is a very giving sport if you cover it in a certain way.

If you could have any guest from the world of football on the podcast, who would it be?

We have two Pompey fans who are hosts on the podcast so personally for me I’d love to get Harry Redknapp on the show and just let them two at it for an hour.

Thanks again to Ross for taking the time to speak to us about all things football. You can download the Man on the Post podcast from acast.com/manonthepost – if you’re looking for a starting point, I’m a guest on this week’s show…

You can also rate and review the podcast on iTunes, with the added bonus that every 5* review gets a Man on the Post fridge magnet. You can never have enough fridge magnets. In all seriousness, it’s a great podcast and well worth a listen. Now, where’s that fridge magnet…