Merry Sunday to you and welcome back to Barnsley, where our deviation from a safe and successful formation has resulted in more goals being scored but probably less of a title challenge. In fairness I don’t think we are doing badly, but Arsenal are having a great season. Can we make up the 5 point gap?

Six weeks out for our old German. He’s not at the peak of his powers but still useful.

We edge past Gillingham. We’re not exactly free flowing at the top end.

Is this Bebeto’s regen? He’s got the mad stats I need so here he comes for £1m.

What I didn’t think about is our non-EU count, which now surpasses the allowed 3 in a matchday squad. Solano, Bakayoko, Hristov, Emerson, Barrera…5 into 3 just doesn’t go. One of those 5 earns us a point at West Ham.

And another earns us the win at home to Villa. It’s like they are auditioning to keep their place.

Borbiconi is off back to France. I liked him but he wasn’t as good in a wing back role.

I can also ship out Devine who wasn’t really getting a kick with all these non-EU strikers around.

Wow. I didn’t see this coming but we warm up for a trip to the Nou Camp by thrashing Spurs. Ian Walker’s hair gets in his eyes on a rare poor performance.

We got a result in Madrid earlier in the campaign but Barcelona have too much for us. An away goal would have been a nice memento but not today.

That’s a lot of wing wangs. But no.

It feels odd that Chelsea signed Roberto Baggio to pair with Michael Owen, almost as if Abramovich turned up 5 years early. Despite the divine ponytail giving Chelsea the lead, future Chelsea man Charvet equalises and Bullock thanks me for prolonging his stay at Oakwell with a double.

A very bad day at Everton follows. Boo.

We need a miracle to see off Barca and it might be on the cards when Barrera scores after 20 minutes. Unfortunately our lack of away goal means they need one to leave us needing 5. The first part happens and we can only manage 3, so a moral victory but not an actual one.

Job is the latest deadwood to go. Useless.

The mackems are sent packing, Hristov is finally fully fit after his 4 month layoff and he scores twice.

We look set to snatch a win at Fratton thanks to Signori’s 85th minute goal but John Aloisi ruins everything. If you thought that was bad news…

Urggghhhh really? Well that’s one way to solve our too many non-EU players crisis.

Ian Rush’s regen is hastily snapped up as an extra body.

I thought I was really clever loaning this lad too to cover wing back positions on deadline day. Poland are however not in the EU so it’s a jolly waste of time.

Forest are brushed aside. We should probably check in on the league table…

On the plus side, we look good for a top two finish and thus Champions League football. On the negative side, Arsenal ahve two games in hand so that 2 points is probably going to be a lot more.

This late leveller for Blackburn is a bit of a sickener.

A Yorkshire derby is at least settled in our favour at the cost of Signori’s season.

‘sakes.

Defeat at Newcastle probably ends any title challenge.

We were in front here. That was good. Then it went downhill rapidly and we took a hiding chasing the game. End this season now.

Arsenal seal the title by beating us, their nearest rivals. It’s hard to argue they don’t deserve it.

Still, second for us means we can live the European high life again and hopefully built that reputation some more.

We finish with a good win at Wimbledon.

That’s a comprehensive second, no mans land to 1st and 3rd.

Some quick business before we get the awards and retirements. Robbie Keane is out of contract so we’ll have him for the future.

Manninger will be a useful backup too.

Let’s see some awards

Michael Oakes the latest goalkeeper to exploit the match engine to take home PFA Player of the Year.

That’s all for this season and indeed this week. Here’s the squad as it stands…5 non-EU players is too many – Bakayoko is back in 6 weeks

Here’s nerd corner.

Was he always this good?

Right then, one last look at this file. Incidentally you can see it yourself in the CM9798 folder under changes.txt.

These are all the bugs that were NOT fixed

Sub bug – 12 players on pitch

The major bug we have not been able to fix is the substitute bug where a player who is substituted does not come off and a team can have 12 players on the pitch. We have not been able to find the cause if this bug and so not been able to fix it. This is a very rare bug and we have never seen it happen ourselves. It is a screen text bug as oppose to a match engine bug and does not mean the opposition team actually has 12 players on the pitch (as this is not possible with the CM2 match engine).

I probably get tweeted about this once a week. I’m amazed they never saw it happen but I feel it is mainly in England Divisons 2 or 3. At least they confirm there aren’t 12 on the field…

7 Subs in European Games

Due to current screen designs, it would have proved too difficult to implement the 7 subs in Champions league ruling, however this will be featured in CM3.

Fair enough – and it was in CM3, so that’s all good.

The following were then identified as not being bugs

Make Player Unavailable

We removed the “Make Player Unavailable” option as we felt this was unrealistic. The manual is incorrect as far as this is concerned.

That’s all well and good but the AI still does it all the time. It should have been out for everybody.

Contract

The “Ctr” sign by a player shows up 3 months before the end of a player’s contract expires as a warning.

I guess people were confused by this as it wasn’t in CM2 unless they were actually out of contract. I don’t see the harm in it.

Big Club Release Clause

This can come into effect at any time even a week after signing a player – so be warned and check a player’s clauses.

Again, I guess people were burned by this – I know I have been! So they probably felt compelled to say it’s not a bug and just something you’ve got to deal with, which I suppose it is.

So there we have it, a comprehensive list of changes…except they missed out one thing which is the change of allowed EU players:

Original:

Patch:

Incidentally this was just in England & Spain – Italy remains three. I’ve heard rumours that work permits don’t expire in Italy on the patch which they definitely do on the original…poor Recoba & Ze Elias.

The EU rules are basically undocumented as far as I can see – let me know if you find anything!