The first Championship Manager I discovered was the original CM2.  After school me and a couple of mates went round a friend’s house.  He said, “You’ve got to see this new football manager game my uncle has.” 15 minutes later, once it had finally all loaded up, that was it, I was hooked and I ran home to beg my dad to let me buy it that weekend.  I still have the original red CD in the black sleeve case with the yellow DOMARK writing on the outside.

My friend and I would spend hours playing football in the park by my house only to come back to mine and spend even longer playing CM2 together. 

He ended up being my best man and we still talk about finding 88-year-old right back Scott Lindsey in CM2.

How I signed 41-year-old Trevor Francis on a free transfer to lead the line.  He banged in a load of goals before suddenly leaving to take up a managerial post. Who reads the finer details of a contact at 13?  The shock and humour in that situation still makes us laugh now, over 30-years later.

Whenever we started a new game our teams always used to fight for the signature of Uwe Rosler. That puffy haired German was a beast, 20 shooting, 20 heading and 20 off the ball!

I managed to get these screenshots thanks to THE9LLAMAS site, https://www.the9llamas.com/home who has fully working and downloadable versions of lots of the original CM games.

I continued playing all the Championship Managers until the Sports Interactive, Eidos split and I even played a lot of CM2010, which a friend of mine helped develop, although I couldn’t quite see past the stats being out of 100.

So, what about CM9798 specifically?  Well, in between having my first child and my second child, I rediscovered CM9798 and specifically Dave’s site.  I had started playing again and needed some help with tactics, it was so much harder than I remembered! 

After my second child was born CM9798 became the perfect game to play while letting her sleep on me and I even wrote my first blog for CM9798.co.uk with her in one hand and my laptop in the other.

Since rediscovering it, I’ve played CM9798 and other CM games for the past 10+ years.  I’ve even got my 72-year-old dad playing it.  When he comes round he loves to talk about his latest save and we both have an unhealthy obsession with Morten Bisgaard. My kids are lucky they are girls otherwise one probably would be called Morten.

For me the best thing about CM9798 and the whole series of CM games, are the stories and conversations with friends.  These stories wouldn’t be possible without the game’s imperfections.  I would go so far as to say, it is the imperfections of the original games that make them all almost perfect.

I want to play a game where:

• Anthony Betterton can end up playing for Real Madrid with over 100 England caps while playing for an AI team.

• Dario Hubner bangs in goals for fun at Real Madrid until he gets a cap for Italy, and is no longer allowed to play anymore due to the strict rules of the blog save.

• Real Betis have one of the best collections of attacking players at the start of the game, including future Barca flop Alfonso. Who is so unbelievably good but also unbelievably fragile, the original Glass Canon.

• A semi-unknown French man of India decent (according to Wikipedia), plays for a team based in place that people going on holiday to France, catch the ferry to, is a great DMC signing for your up-and-coming challenger team.

• And finally, a bald (although probably not at the time) Welshman playing for Watford who will sign for pretty much any club in Division 1 or above, can go on to be possibly the best central defender and captain in the game.

When I think about it, it’s crazy that a game that is basically just a glorified database, whose flashiest thing is literally flashing text, still captures people’s interest nearly 30 years later, but I’m glad it does.

Many thanks to Dave, the Blog squad and all the other people on the internet for keeping all the CM games going strong.

I’ll sign off with two pictures, first Marco Negri, who’s regen the AI wanted to sign from me for over £20 million, the most I’ve ever been offered for a player.

And Finally Igor, because if I’m playing a long save I will always wait patiently for his regen to come along before snapping him up as my club captain for the next 10 years.

CM9798 the game that coined the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”