Wish you all a very happy, prosperous and healthy new year! The ideal script of the day was for us to thrash Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge so we can all say that we are back to our winning ways and that the new year has brought us some much needed luck. As ideal scripts go, we got beaten.

Only hours earlier, Man Utd were beaten at Old Trafford on Fergie’s 70th birdthday so I was all charged up for our game. I guess we don’t need to worry about the Manchester teams anymore. We’ve officially joined the ‘also-rans club’ where we constantly peg ourselves to the league leaders but have no chance on earth to catch them. I don’t care what happens to the Manchester clubs anymore. From now until the end of the season, I’m only going to be concerned about also-rans – Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal.

I’ll do you a favour – I won’t talk about the match. I’ll talk about something bigger and more relevant. I’ll talk about where were we, where are we, how we got here, where do we want to go and how do we get there. What better time than the new year eve to reflect on what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong. Also, the idea is to put things in perspective so we don’t get all hysterical and suicidal in these circumstances. So, here we go!

Where were we?

When Ancelotti left Chelsea, the signs of the limitations of the squad were visible – ageing players, lack of creativity, lack of pace and lack of meritocracy. I was pretty critical of Carlo for not getting the best out of the squad. I still stand by it. Granted, we had some issues with our squad but with what we had, I didn’t think he got the best out of it. Best part of the last decade, we were in the top two in the league. As soon as the new Man City emerged, we should have conceded that real title contenders are three and not just two. All other things being equal, you’d find Man Utd, Man City and Chelsea occupying the top three places in different order in the coming seasons. At the beginning of the year, we were at a stage were we realised that Man City are here to stay and if we don’t act quickly, we could lose out. That’s where we were.

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Why always Chelsea? Some of us Chelsea supporters ask, for the past few days every time I look at a newspaper or  Sky Sports News, there is always a “false” Chelsea story.

Yesterday it was Fernando Torres the 50 million man is going to be up for sale in either the January transfer window or the Summer transfer window, it was reported that Chelsea would listen to offers around the region of 20 million of course this was false and later that day Andre Villas-Boas denied this and the press moved onto another “false” story, why always Chelsea?

When I picked up the newspaper today, guess what? The headline read “Furious” Drogba to leave Chelsea next month and Lampard is set to follow him, funny eh? Drogba stated a few weeks ago that he will be loyal to his contract and not leave in January. This is a quote from The Sun newspaper: “The Ivory Coast international has been offered a two-year deal by Chinese club Dalian Aerbin worth £200,000 per week while Chelsea are only prepared to give him 12 months at £125,000 a week” Really? The press is once again attacking Chelsea, why always Chelsea? I very doubt this story is true and it is just the press making another “false” story, Andre Villas-Boas will deny that Drogba is “Furious” and the press will just make another “false” story, am I right? It is now just becoming predictable this has been going on for a few weeks now…

Last week once again I picked up The Sun newspaper and the headline read “Chelsea training bust-up” well something across them lines, immidately I knew it would be The Sun writing another false story, it was reported that an insider said  ”It was unbelievable. The manager would look at a player, tear him to shreds, then move on to the next one. ”For example, he turned to Didier Drogba and told him, ‘You’re a fraction of the player you were last season’. ”Then he turned to the next player and laid into him.”Everyone was stunned, they’d never seen him like this and had never been treated like this before.”But AVB saved his bombshell moment for 32-year-old striker Anelka, and 29-year-old central defender .  Our insider continued: “The manager told Anelka he wasn’t welcome anywhere. ”He was banned from training with the first team, banned from using the training facilities if the first-team squad were using them — and told he would be training with the reserves from now on. ”Then AVB turned to Alex and said ‘And the same applies to you’, and of course Andre Villas-Boas denied this a few days later, another false story, why always Chelsea?

I could go on forever and forever about false story’s regarding Chelsea, rarely I pick up The Sun newspaper and see that they have complimented Chelsea, well I should say hardly never even after the win against Manchester City they claimed that Ashley Cole “taunted” Manchester City and of course it was denied later that day, I now find it hard to believe that the press report an actual true story about Chelsea or even see The Sun compliment Chelsea, I very doubt this will happen and I will be totally shocked if any two of these happen. Andre Villas-Boas has now began having a go at  the press, I guess this makes them want to write more “false” story’s and wind up Andre Villas-Boas even more, I will say this one more time. Why always Chelsea?

The press can continue to write false story’s about Chelsea they’re just making idiots out of themselves when Andre Villas-Boas deny’s these story’s over and over again.

I hope you all enjoyed this more than any other of my posts and if you did or didn’t please drop a comment below, be honest and tell me what you thought of this, is it better or worse than previous posts?

Please feel free to debate about this topic and write your thoughts of “The Press and Chelsea”, is it always Chelsea?

Twitter:@Chelsea_Callum

 

 

It was one of those weekends. Didn’t get to see even one minute of football. No premier league. No la liga. No serie a. Chelsea away at Blackburn did give me some worries. In a way, it’s okay that I didn’t get to see this game. I heard that we didn’t play great football. When you play ordinary football in an away stadium and try to negotiate for the last half hour with a slender 1-0 lead, it’s gonna be a very nervy affair.

Either we don’t control like matches before or I’m growing older. Most probably, it’s both. The ‘heart-in-mouth’ feeling once a while is okay. You end up winning some of those and lose some of those. That’s the very beauty of football. But if every match is so thrilling (read ‘lacking in discipline and control’), one of these days I’m gonna get a heart attack.

As it always happens with Chelsea, I see a pattern emerging with Chelsea supporters’ stance on the Chelsea manager. Most Chelsea fans seem to love Andre Villas Boas. He seems to have their sympathy if not support. While many seem to not like how the Chelsea season has gone so far, the sympathy for the man is very prevalent. The reason is obvious. Andre wants to bring in change.

Jose Mourinho made this Chelsea team a champion. He changed the mindset of the players to make them believe they can win trophies and with back-to-back titles and other trophies he turned their dreams into reality. He brought in a step change in the Chelsea mindset. None of his successors brought in change – Grant, Scolari, Hiddink or Ancelotti – none of them. Yes they might have won trophies or they could have been improvements but none of them brought in a step change.

Andre Villas Boas is the agent of change. I don’t think he would be experimenting this if he didn’t have the support of Roman. Andre is talking about a new identity in Chelsea’s style of play – an identity that would not be compromised no matter what the circumstances are. This is something that’s never been tried here at Chelsea. If we thought this transformation would happen quite smoothly with the current players and the pshyche of the club, the supporters and the media, we are wrong.

It’s quite clear that we are not doing great. With Man City going gung-ho, our odds to win the title are heavily cut. Ask any Chelsea fan if Chelsea would win the title this season – most would say ‘no way’. The argument of this set of players not being able to adopt to the new philosophy is not so much in favour of Boas. Because it was Boas who waited for weeks to effect the transfers and finally bought Mata, Meireles, Romeu and Lukaku. And, he even said that his squad was complete and are ready for the premier league season. It was Ancelottiesque.

Luckily for Boas, Man City have exceeded everyone’s (even their own) expectations in the first 11 matches. The way the Manchester teams have gone about their title challenge has helped Boas not to get too much media attention or even untoward fan reactions. We have all kind of accepted the fact that Man City has the best squad and are in the best run of form that trailing to them is not such a bad thing after all.

What’s hidden is that we have managed only 22 points in 11 matches. That’s 2 points per game. And that’s 76 points in average. And that’s no longer a title winning tally in premier league. Actually, in most cases that’s a tally of the third/fourth team in the table. We’ve lost three game and drawn one. And we have conceded 1.36 goals per game. If this average continues, we would have shipped 52 goals at the end of the league. That’s only 6 less than what the relegated Birmingham conceded last season.

There’s work to be done, especially in defence. There’s an impression that if we improve defensively, we would be fine. I think that’s not true. In attack, we are lot more fluent than we’ve ever been. Boas’ philosophy of ‘freeing’ his players is certainly paying dividends. Sometimes the fluent teams do get a little complacent and lack the killer instinct to finish off games. That’s what happening to us too in attacks. We are great to watch but our attack-to-creation-to-conversion ratio has been poor.

In defence, we are leaking goals like nobody’s business. Our set-piece defending is horrendous and I sometimes just close my eyes and hope that I don’t hear the commentator screaming. That’s how we defend set pieces now. Our high-line defence and pressing high up has been much talked about. When it works, it works like magic. When it doesn’t it looks silly. Surely we need more time to get accustomed with such set ups but until then it’s gonna be tough.

Also, forever the high-line defence will be our weakness and teams will always try to exploit that. In the Roman era, we’re known for our strength, depth and maturity in defence and how we are probably the hardest team to beat in the last decade. Not anymore. You will see teams picking fast players when they play Chelsea and beat the offside the trap. The problem with this is, all your hard work in attack and defence can be undone by momentary lack of concentration as every mistake will turn out to be very costly. If this is the approach we want to take in defence, very well but we surely need faster and younger defenders. Probably, that’s what’s there in Boas’ mind too.

Despite all these things, I must say that I have my complete trust and belief in Andre Villas Boas. I’d love to see him as the Chelsea manager for a long long time. I’m completely behind Boas but that’s not going to stop me from worrying when we gather 22 points and concede 15 goals in 11 games. But I also understand that a new footballing philosophy comes with a cost. And as a Chelsea fan, I’m prepared to take that cost (in my case, extreme emotional stress!). I don’t know if the club administration or the owner or the fellow fans and supporters are willing to take the cost and how long will they continue to. Personally, I’m ready to wait for Andre Villas Boas to do his magic. I’m ready to take the cost of the new philosophy. Are you?

The all-important PES 2012 review! I’ve had PES 2012 for a few days now. Generally, PES gets better with time. The game’s got a steep ‘appreciating curve’. The more you play, the more you appreciate. For a game such as this, to post a review so soon may be injustice. But hey, I can still call it ‘first week impressions’.

In the last few days, I had only few opportunities to play the game. Each time, my idea was to play a couple of games and leave it for the weekend. You thought I could stop with just two games per session? Since I got the game, I’ve gone to bed only at 5am in the morning and have managed to get up at 10am so can I get a few games before I leave for work. By now, I’ve played dozens and dozens of matches. The ‘just one more game’ syndrome! Sign of good times!

HOW DO I PLAY

Before we get into the review, let me give you the details of my settings based on which this section is written. I play on PS3 on my 40″ HDTV but I prefer to play on 480p on 4:3 aspect ratio. Yes, this means sacrificing some sharp graphics but playing Pro Evo on 480p on 4:3 is such an amazing experience that I don’t care about the HD graphics. If you haven’t tried it, please do it. You’ll thank me forever. Also, make sure you make the other PS3 settings to go with this.

I play the US edition of PES 2012. Mine is version 1.1 (which is the release day patch). I play on ‘minus two’ gamespeed setting. I play on ‘four bar’ passing. I always play on blimp camera. When you play on blimp and at ‘minus two’ game speed, the ‘four bar’ passing feels just right.

The teams that I play keeps changing. I normally play as Chelsea, Everton, Wigan, Real Madrid, Valencia, Villareal, Milan, Roma, Napoli, Ajax, Bayern, Schalke, Porto etc. Most of my games are exhibition matches with different match-ups, mostly driven by the real games in the weekend. I don’t play master league (yeah I know). I hardly play online. I have started a BAL game but haven’t really gotten into it. So apologies that I won’t cover online play and football life in this review.

I don’t know if I have a particular playing style as such. I play through the middle and I run along the flanks. I try to score screamers and sometimes try to walk the ball into the net. Mostly, I guess I play to the strength and weakness of the team I choose to play and the opponent team. I’m not a wold beater in PES. I’m just a decent player who’s hard to break down and very competitive irrespective of my abilities.

RATING SCALE

I’d rate this game on a scale of 100. Of the 100, I’d give a weightage of 60 for the gameplay, 20 for the looks and 20 for the game modes and options.

THE GOODIES

Here I’d talk about the presentation, graphics, animation and commentary. These are very important to the game and how the game presents itself but these are not everything. But if these fall too much below the standards, they could be game breaking.

PRESENTATION

The menus look lovely. They have a lot of life and personality. I love the way they are. I think Konami introduced this menu style in PES 2011 and very rightly stuck to it. The in-game menus are bit underwhelming and I may even call it ‘cheap’. Particularly, when you’re playing Become a legend, you do get a feeling that the menus and navigation look so low-budget. Not that it matters a lot to me but they can take a leaf from the other sports games to make the overall look and feel more stylish and savvy.

GRAPHICS

This is PES’ forte. PES has always had brilliant graphics – be it the lightings, player models, likenesses or the pitch. The graphics are always top-notch and it’s only better in PES 2012. Playing in the day setting in any stadia is an absolute joy. I thought they had nailed the day-time lighting in PES 2011 but they have bettered themselves in this version. While Pro Evo has some amazingly accurate player faces, I’ve noticed quite a few ‘that’s not how he looks’.

Also, the rain is either not visible or not as beautiful as it used to be in 2011 and 2010. You’re able to see the rain only in cut scenes and much closer camer angles. You might say that this is how it is even when watch a game on TV but somehow the last wo PES games showed rain very well. Anyway, on the whole, a brilliant effort in the graphics department with some room for improvement.

ANIMATIONS

PES 2011 could never reach its potential because of the broken animations. Based on fan feedback, one of the big improvement areas for PES 2012 was animations. In PES 2012, I just love the animations. There are hundreds of little pieces of animations that brings the game to life. Some of them are when the ball is in play and some of them when the ball is not in play. I still keep noticing a new animation in every match. Also, the animations have beautifully captured PES’ philosophy around inertia and momentum. That’s what makes PES so immersive.

That said, all’s not well because there’s still some work to be done on transitions between animations. For instance, imagine a player jumping high to win a header and misses it. As soon as he falls on the pitch, he still wants to go and win the ball. The animation to win the header is beautiful. The animation to recover the ball from lying flat on the pitch is also beautiful. What’s missing is the piece of code that seamlessly transitions from the first animation to the latter. That’s what make this episode looks a bit ‘jerky’.

So when people talk about PES 2012 animations not being good, I think they mostly talk about the transitions and not the animations themselves. Look at the animation of a screamer from 35 yards. Look at the animation where the defender cheekily wins the ball. Look at the some of the dribbles some accomplished players. They are all amazing animations bringing this as close to real football as possible but transitions do require some work.

CAMERA

Camera angles are huge component of making a football game a success or a failure. No matter how good the game is, if the camera angles aren’t good, the game’s going waste. In PES 2012, some new camera angles have been introduced, most importantly – blimp. Now, this blimp angle alone wins the game for me. Finally, I have a camera angle that allows me to see the whole width of the pitch without having to take my off to check the radar. Some may think that the camera is too distant to feel involved in the game or to make skill moves. For me though, I’m perfectly at home with this camera angle and I can’t thank Konami enough for including this.

Still missing some polish though. When you have a camera angle so far out as blimp, you can’t have those kind of score/time card and the player names that look massive in size for this camera angle. I hope blimp becomes a regular feature in the PES offerings. And I’m puzzled why the blimp angle is not available for online games.

The missing piece in the camera section continues to be the lack of option customise the height, zoom and the tilt of the camera angles. Seriously, I’m struggling to understand why it’s not there in the game.

SOUND

No improvement here. PES is never known for its commentary looks like Konami have absolutely no intentions of improving this either. I never care for the commentary too much. After a couple of weeks, you’re gonna hear the same stuff over and over again anyway. In fact, what I always do is to switch the commentary to a language that I don’t know, such as Spanish or Portuguese or even Japanese so that I don’t need to pick on it but the intensity of the game is retained with some eccentric sounds of an unknown language.

Sadly though, even the Spanish and Portuguese commentary in PES 2012 are not good. Not that I understand what they say but lacks the tempo. My PES 2012 is now on French commentary which is better sounding than the rest. An exciting Spanish commentary pack would be most welcome.

Other than that, the usual style of music is there. I thought PES 2011 had fantastic music in comparison but probably I need to give more time to 2012. The ball sounds are there but slightly subdued. The crowd sounds are good but can be improved but when it’s clear that Konami doesn’t care about sound at all, no point even talking about it.

ATTACK

This is where this game shines. If you’re the slow build-up kind of player, you’re gonna love this game. With your and the opponent players constantly moving on the pitch to create spaces or close spaces or close down the ball possessor, the game is so dynamic with new opportunities being opened up with every game second.

Dribbling in the game is just perfect. Special dribblers are really special and you know that when you control them or face them. The others dribble as much and as good as professional footballers can do. I love the fact that dribbling is now lot more intuitive that it ever was. You kinda ‘know’ what to do in certain situations and the game/player responds superbly to that. The movement is so free that with the ball you are always presented with a number of options of how to build that attack. The one gripe here is the dribbling animation. When less accomplished dribblers run at high speeds, the feet movement almost looks like they cycling on a football pitch. That should look lot smoother than it does now. Plus, its 2012 – can’t we not have unique dribbling styles – at least say, 15-20 different dribbling styles instead of the current four?

The other aspect that makes attacking a real pleasure is the passing. I think, finally in next-gen, Konami have fixed the passing. No more of ‘I didn’t want to pass there’ or ‘I didn’t intend to give it to this guy’. Within the mechanics of the sliders and the limitations of the player attributes, the passes go where and how fast you want them to go. Now you can pass in tight spaces or make lovely cross field ground passes. This allows you to adopt different playing styles. If you want to suffocate like Barca does, the current passing system does allow you. The success of this passing system is complemented by the brilliant AI players – both on your team and on the opponents side. If the player movements were less dynamic, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty of this passing system.

Also, the off-the-ball options for set pieces is a great addition. It just makes a whole lot of things possible. In PES 2012, I don’t take any corners myself anymore. I want to be in the box, fighting with the defenders for space and heading that ball into the net.

On the attack side, some improvements needed though. The long passing is assisted, no matter how manual you get with all the sliders and stuff. It’s very hard to make a bad long pass (lob that is). You invariably find your man as long as you point the direction or thereabouts. I’d like to see a better percentage of errors there. In short passing, while it is much improved, it’s not perfection. Until it’s not perfection, there’s room for improvement!

Overall, the attack in this game is superb. The game is so bustling because of the dynamism of the attacking opportunities and manouvres possible in this game.

DEFENCE

I generally love defending, be it in real football or in football games. Defending is an art and I think it’s very hard to build a good defensive system in a football game. I think PES 2012 is the closest that anyone’s ever got. Now the whole defence is based on knowing when to contain, when to pressure and when to tackle.

So you’re first expected to make this decision and then follow it up with your button presses. Either you think through and you do intuitively, but you don’t push some buttons and hope. You should clearly know what you’re doing. With the AI being so clever and able, jumping into a tackle may not always work, particularly against all players. You need to know the player that you’re defending and make your choices accordingly. For instance, if it’s Arjen Robben coming against your defender, if you rush into a tackle, you’ll see him dance past you and set up a one-on-one. What you can do is to contain him, allow your fellow defenders and midfielders to get back to their positions and then time your tackle to win the ball.

Some people have found defence either too difficult or cumbersome. I find it just perfect. As soon as I lose possession, I straightaway go to R2 (for jockeying) and select the relevant defender and position myself to jockey and block the space for the attacker. This has become second nature. Everytime I lose possession, if there’s no opportunity for a quick recovery, I naturally go to R2. That’s all you need to know and remember. But when you don’t do this, you’re challenging Arjen Robben on pace and skill, which is not a great idea.

Defenders are never as quick as attackers but they don’t always get found out on pace because half of defending is positioning. With intelligent AI players in your team, you only need to pick the relevant defender and use R2 to contain and time your tackle. The key tip here is to release R2 as you tackle because these are two contradicting inputs. Either you jockey or your tackle. So if you decide to tackle, let go the R2. Do it simultaneously. It’s like driving a car – like how you switch between the clutch and accelerator.

What I don’t see enough in this defence system is that little shoulder budge, some body check and good old fashioned shirt pull. In classic PES, we had all this and that added so much personality to the game, because they are so real. In real life football, defending is not just jockey, containing and tackling. The push, the shove and the body checks are all key methods for effective defending.

If you’re a thinking defender, you’ll enjoy this challenge. If all that you want to do is to attack and score goals, well, you better learn to love defending. It’s rewarding and it makes your PES experience more complete.

GOALKEEPING

What can I say that’s not been said about goalkeeping in PES 2012? Well, I can say goalkeepers are good in this game. Even in the demos, I didn’t find them as bad as the community is making them out to be. They weren’t perfect but I could live with it. With the release day patch, version 1.1 have made them more solid. Yes, they still make mistakes but that’s how it should be, right? In real football and in PES, attackers and defenders make mistakes and that’s what keep the game flowing. The same should be true for the goalkeepers too. They should make errors in judgment, just like the other 21 men (incl the ref, I’ll come to that later) on the pitch.

As it stands, the goalkeepers are good. They have made some stunning saves and they have made some mistakes too. There were games where I thought the best performance on the pitch was from the goalkeeper – mine or the opponent’s. What I would say is that they still lack in the animations department. Imagine how the goalkeepers would operate if they had only 10 animations while they should have something like 30. That’s what looks a bit awkward at times. It’s an area to improve and it’s just not a game breaker at all.

REFEREE

I think Konami have nailed it this year on this aspect. Never once did I have to complain about the ref being too lenient or too strict. They are just right. That doesn’t mean they won’t make mistakes. They do, but they are very consistent with some odd mistakes here and there. Exactly, how I want the referees in real football too. I want them to be consistent but make those odd mistakes which make football and football banter interesting, especially when I’m not on the receiving side. In some instances, I did have some issues with referee kit colour clashing with the team kit colour. This is pretty basic stuff and should be patchable. And by the way, the auto kick-off is gone. Yay!

TACTICS

Probably, the only area where PES 2012 has gone back. The tactical options in PES 2011 was comprehensive but also built a solid base to improve on. Surprisingly, in PES 2012, Konami have dumbed down the tactical options instead of expanding further. In PES 2012, we have the same tactical sliders and four presets where each preset can have a formation, style and set of tactical sliders. You’re able to change the tactics on the fly while the action is taking place on the pitch. Our ability to edit the tactical options is now limited only to the four presets and it’s the AI teams’ choice to use one of those depending on the match situation.

What I dearly miss is the ability to instruct the team to play in a certain way depending on match situations. For instance, in PES 2011, I was able to tell my team to adopt a style in the first 15 minutes of the game or a different style when I’m a goal down. While you can argue that presets do that same thing and tells you to take the decision while the game is played on the pitch, I’m unable to know or influence how various teams would play. In PES 2011, each and evey team had this tactical options set up or you were able to set it up for the teams yourselves to resemble their real life playing style. And when you play against these teams you could see that when they are a goal down, you know each of these teams could react differently to these situations based on the tactical option settings.

In the absence of the tactical settings or various match situations for teams, I don’t know how a certain opponent would play in a certain situation. You can say that this is a good thing as there’s some unpredicatability. I’d agree if Konami are spot on with their choices of tactical option settings for all the teams. As we saw in PES 2011, they are not. Setting most teams to ‘long ball’ is not making use of these options well. And now, they might have hard coded these settings to ‘long ball’ and we wouldn’t even know it or be able to change it.

Otherwise, I do like the ability to change tactics on the fly and love that little manager graphic with whose gestures we’d know what tactic we have chosen. Clever little feature.

It’s a bit sad to know that the tactical set ups for most teams need a lot of work. The formations are wrong, so are the line-ups and squads and the game sliders are totally off for many teams. It requires a community project (such as PESCoach) to clean up the Konami mess. Sounds familiar? Probably, Konami should use the services of some of the community members to help them with such data gathering stuff instead of getting it wrong each time. It’s a shame that the tactical options are not optimised while the game plays so well and can use these options very well.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

It is indeed. What’s very pleasing to see is that your players have become intelligent too. Traditionally, we’ve had this problem of say, Lucio when he plays as an opponent defender, gives you a nightmare and when he’s on your team, he goes totally awful. Not anymore. The improvement of the AI of the players of the user-controlled team has brought us on a level playing field with the monster of the opponent AI.

I can say with confidence that the AI in PES 2012 is the best ever seen in football games – all classic PES included. The AI is just amazing. The moves that it makes, the passes that it sees and especially the cunning intelligence that you normally associate only with human players. I’m very pleased with Konami’s effort with the AI. In an era of gaming where single player gaming is the relegated to obscurity and is replaced by massively multiplayer games, Konami’s effort to improve the single player experience through excellent AI is commendable. Honestly, even in multiplayer games in football, the AI matters a lot because at any point the user only controls one player out of his eleven. But you don’t find gaming companies spending too much AI if the focus is very high on multiplayer.

The improvement in AI shines across. Back in PES 2009 and 2010, BAL sometimes used to be a frustrating experience because your team mates were just dumb. Similarly, when you play ‘fix’ in a tournament, your performance was always better than your team mates at least by a point on a 10 point scale. Now, try playing ‘fix’ and see the difference for yourself.

A good AI doesn’t mean all teams should start playing like Barca. In fact, that’s a good example of a bad AI. In PES 2012, the difference between the various teams and the players is very visible and pronounced. As a player who plays with a number of teams from different leagues, I can tell you that each team is unique, even though their formations and preset playing style is the same. The difference is brought out by the individuality of the players that make up those teams. The AI is the most important reason why PES 2012 feels so ‘alive’.

DIFFICULTY

One of the things my mates and I always liked PES for was the difficulty. We liked the fact that it was difficult. We liked that challenge. Sometimes the AI cheated but we’d be like ‘we’ll fuck you back, you cheating bastard’. We knew that we couldn’t relax for one second. We had to stay alert all the time – until the final whistle. We had to be on our toes. You lose your focus for a moment, you’ll have your asses handed over to you. The next-gen PES had lost this. For instance, I could be on the phone with someone and still play and win in PES 2011 – something that was impossible with PES 5. Now, PES 2012 has taken us back to those glory days.

Make no mistake, PES 2012 is hard. I’m still playing only on professional and my win-loss ratio is almost equal and this is only in exhibition matches. Traditionally, the AI gets much more competitive in the tournaments than in the exhibition matches. So, it might take a lot of time for me to beat the professional AI in tournaments on a consistent basis. Even if I manage to do that, I’ll have more and better challenges in the game. The top player on classic PES was much revered, especially when you’re playing tournaments and such. That is back. Top player on PES 2012 is a monster. And you know what, there’s this superstar level above top player. You wanted a challenge, right?

EDITING

As a passionate game play editor of PES games, I was a bit disappointed with the editing side of PES 2012. It’s not that we’re missing something but it’s just that this section has not evolved at all. In the last few years, editing section has remained almost undisturbed. The community was crying out loud for an in-game global editor for the console version that would allow you to edit values by certain points or percentage for a certain ability across all the players in a team or selection of teams or a league or a selection of leagues. It’s well known that the best PES experience is possible only on PC. That’s also because the game play editors available for PC can make the game so much better and so much customised to personal preferences. The PS3 game play editing is very low-key because of the manual effort involved. Hope this changes in future.

The other lack of improvement is in explaining the player abilities and cards. While there is a probably poorly translated one-liner for each ability, in most cases, we find the real meaning of the ability by trial and error after numerous play tests by game play editors. With no more piggyback tutorials, there’s a bigger need from Konami’s side to explain these details and changes better knowing well that we have a PES-fanatic community that edits the game to optimise it.

After the exciting inclusion of Stadium Editor in 2011, I was expecting this to be a much more mature feature in 2012. It’s pretty much the same with some new additions. Nothing ground breaking or fundamental here.

LONGEVITY

Great AI, punishing difficulty levels, better passing system, optimised defence system, improved graphics and animations, new camera angles and enhanced football life – one hell of a game! Don’t even bother about longevity. This game will be played beyond 2012. Like how we have people (like me) who still play PES 5 on PS2, this game, PES 2012, will stand the test of time.

RATING

As mentioned earlier, I’d rate this game on a scale of 100 with a weightage of 60 for the gameplay, 20 for the looks and 20 for the game modes and options. My rating for this game would be 80/100 which comprises of 50/60 for gameplay, 15/20 for the looks, 15/20 for the game modes and options. Just to put this in perspective, I’d have given 80 or less for PES 5 which I consider is the best football game to date, a mantle that PES 2012 can rightfully take after some time. I very strongly recommend PES 2012. If you’re a football fan, you won’t be disappointed.

FINAL WORDS

Having grown up with the PES/WE series, I was rooting for Konami to make a comeback. It’s like you’re supporting your underdog football club in a cup final against a heavyweight superstar club. I’ve tried this ‘I’m a customer and I’ll buy the best football game available in the market’ line. That’s not true. It’s like the school and college you studied. There’s a subconscious bonding that’s created by the good and bad times with classic PES. I just can’t deny that. That’s one reason why I’ve been more forgiving with PES and really looking for Konami and Konami alone to give me my football game. And, they haven’t disappointed.

What Konami started with 2011, they have almost finished their job with 2012. I say almost, because the finishing touches are yet to be made. What is certain is that PES is back on track. Konami have showed that they still have the ambition to produce a top class game in this competitive industry and are unfazed by their recent failures. With PES 2012, they have reassured to the football fans that if there’s one company that understands the heart and soul of football and can code that and replicate in a football game, that’s only Konami. In a year when their country rose above from their national disaster, Konami rises above to show why they are the best in making football games. Hats off to Konami for an excellent PES 2012!

Published on ProEvo Nights

Has the transfer window closed already? It almost feels like you’re in a supermarket, you’ve got money, you’ve found the beer but you see the lights going off and you rush to the billing counter and hear a polite voice telling you ‘sorry sir, the counter is closed’. At least, I’d run to the nearest shop that is open but as far as Chelsea is concerned all shops are closed for 4 months and we need to manage with the limited supplies we’ve got.

For me, the disappointment was more from the fact that we didn’t land a Modric or a player in the mould of Modric. I truly believed that Modric will arrive on the last day but he didn’t. With Arry constantly bickering that Luka’s head is not in the right place, I did think that Spurs may not want to keep an unhappy player. Look at Arteta. Big player for Everton. He said he wanted to leave and he was bid only for £10m. He was allowed to go because Moyes and Kenwright didn’t want an unhappy player despite the fact that he’s their key player and has been around for more than 6 seasons.

I would never want to keep an unhappy player. There’s one thing about a player negotiating on contract and another about submitting a transfer request. I know there are contracts and they need to be respected. A player cannot say he wants to leave one year after signing a 5-year contract but once he submits a transfer request, the bonding and connection of the fans with the player is lost. I’m not a chairman, I’m just a fan. I don’t see Spurs fans having any sort of positive relationship with Modric anymore, because he’s an outsider to start with. He’s not Steven Gerrard to almost sign for Chelsea and go back kiss the Liverpool badge with no one having a problem about it. Anyway, I still think we’d get Modric in January, also depending on how he behaves with Spurs in the next 4 months.

There’s a positive in not signing Modric, if you really want to look for one. We went after Modric because we need a playmaker, a proper ball player. When we didn’t get Modric, we should have got the likes of Moutinho, which we didn’t. Josh had asked Boas to go on a loan. Boas has told him not to and has promised him first team action. So now, if you put these two things together, you’ll see why I’m saying not signing Modric is not a terrible thing after all.

John Terry said this: “We have young Josh McEachran as well. We’ve not let him out on loan because he’s got a big part to play this year and we wish him well and hopefully he comes through.”

Our transfer deadline story was Raul Meireles. The 28-year old midfielder was our third signing from Liverpool in the space of about 12 months or so. Is he the kind of player that we need? I don’t think so. Given the circumstances, will I take him? Hell yes. We need options in midfield. We badly need options in midfield. We need a bunch of players to choose from and we need competition for places. Raul Meireles will do. He’s a decent player but he’s somewhat a direct player like Lampard, Ramires etc. He’s not your creative fulcrum. Nevertheless, he’s a new midfielder, experienced pro and more importantly, has worked with the boss earlier. So, I’m sure Boas knows a thing or two about Raul and at Chelsea, he can fulfill his potential for 2-3 seasons.

Once I got through the disappointment of not signing a Modric or a Moutinho, I could see that we’ve done decent business in this transfer window. Overall, I must say I’m quite pleased with the business Andre Villas Boas has done in this summer. Here is the snapshot:

Players bought: Thibaut Courtois, Oriol Romeu, Romelu Lukaku, Juan Mata, Ulises Davila and Raul Meireles.

No problem here. We’ve added quality to our attack as well as midfield. Romeu, Meireles, Lukaku and Mata – if these four players are used very often and very well, this will have a big impact on where we would stand at the end of December. These are really good purchases that could have an impact on Chelsea for many seasons.

Players out on loan: Thibaut Courtois, Jeffrey Bruma, Ulises Davila, Patrick van Aanholt, Gael Kakuta and Yossi Benayoun.

I didn’t like that Yossi had to go out on loan. I thought he’s a very useful to player to have in the bench, if not in the starting eleven. I think it’s a blunder to have let him go on a loan. At a time where we need to add creativity to our midfield, we’ve managed to bring Meireles and let Yossi go on a loan to a rival. Good news – Ryan Bertrand has not gone on a meaningless loan. He just signed a 4-year contract. Last season, Ashley Cole neither had a challenge nor had a back up but Ryan, in his only opportunity, that too as a sub, created a beautiful assist. Happy that he stays with the first team.

Players sold: Michael Mancienne, Gokhan Tore, Jack Cork, Fabio Borini, Yury Zhirkov, and Slobodan Rajkovic.

It’s a pity that we couldn’t keep Borini. He’s a good young player but we have too many forwards at the moment and there’s really no place for Borini right now. Zhirkov never had a good spell of form. His stay was marred by injuries and lack of opportunities. If he couldn’t challenge Ashley Cole for his place, who from the current squad will challenge Ashley? I think Boas sees Bertrand as more of an injury cover than a player that would challenge Cole. Rajkovic was another one that I had lots of expectations but he’s gone too.

Let’s see how the squad looks at the end of this transfer window.

Goalkeepers: We’ve added one but have sent him on loan. End of this season, we might let Hilario go and get Courtois as Cech’s deputy.

Defenders: We have weakened ourselves here. We have eight defenders of which, four can play centre back, three can play right back and two can play left back. Left back is still an area of concern. When Ashley is fit and in form, it’s all fine. God forbid, if he goes on a 2-month injury or something, expectations on Ryan will be high. Hopefully, we rotate Ashley and Ryan well enough that Ryan is not overawed when he needs to come in for Ashley.

Midfielders: We have added mostly in quantity and not too much in terms of proven quality. Anyway, we at least have more options to choose from and hopefully better competition for places. Happy to see Josh finding some place in Boas’ first team plans. Meireles can perfectly play Lampard’s role. Don’t forget, Essien could come back after a few months. I only hope he doesn’t go for the African cup and plays for Chelsea.

Forwards: We have added real quality here. Juan Mata and Lukaku are real gems. They provide so much variety and most importantly, I’ve use the word again – options. I’m happy that Sturridge is back. Luckily, he didn’t go on another loan or become a makeshift in some transfer. If Boas so wishes, he can arrange his line-ups in such a way that he doesn’t have to play Malouda, Kalou and Anelka at all.

We do have a good squad now. The one player that we are missing is an established playmaker. You might say that’s the most important gap that we should have filled but we don’t exactly know if Boas is serious about using Josh. Having not bought an established playmaker and having let Yossi go on a season-long loan, Boas is definitely sending a message to Josh and Romeu, if he is keen to have these type of players in the first team.

Last season I said we had a better squad than Man Utd. This season Man Utd have only added only two outfield players Phil Jones and Ashley Young. Compare that with the players we have added this season and might play in the first team – Mata, Lukaku, Meireles and Romeu. Certainly we have got stronger. Where Man Utd have made a difference is in expanding their squad with their young players instead of bought players.

Even in that area, we have Bertrand and McEachran who will have big roles to play in the first team this season. Plus, we have a Lucas ‘the new Kaka’ Piazon and Gael Kakuta joining us in January. I see we have a very exciting squad.

Let me say this with the right emphasis – A squad is only as good as how it’s used.

We have the resources – a good mix of skill and strength, youth and experience, English and foreign. A complete disservice to this squad would be to get stuck to a line-up of ‘seniors’ irrespective of whether they are in form or not. I have full faith in Boas that he would use this squad well.

From a squad strength point of view, Man City have the best squad. They have two possible full blown teams in their first team squad. They have probably two established players for each position. The squad is very strong but it will its own downside and in particular the high maintenance and man management surrounding such squads.

Bottomline: I’m much more excited and hopeful than I was at the end of last season. We have certainly strengthened our squad. We’ve got a new young manager. He’s done well so far. I think Boas was still getting involved in the transfers and stuff which is also the reason why he’s advocating closing the transfer window before the start of the season. Let’s get over this international break. Boas will have a near-full squad to choose from – with a number of them being ‘his’ players or young players. Overall, I’m very happy about how this transfer window has gone. And hey! Sneijder didn’t sign for Manure!

Frank Lampard is a Chelsea legend. He is and will be in the Chelsea hall of fame. He has made some incredible achievements in his 10 seasons at Chelsea which would be hard to beat for any player – 164 consecutive premier league appearances, more than 100 goals, three times Chelsea player of the year, runner-up to the world player of the year award, second in the all-time premier league assists – he’s had an illustrious career and we’ve been a big beneficiary of the same.

I like him very much. I think of him as a model professional. Trains hard, plays hard, makes no excuses, delivers consistently, acts with class and grace – he’s a top professional in this football world where 18-year olds talking and behaving like they’ve won the world cup thrice and as many ballon d’ors.

Basically, I’ve tried to established three things here: (a) We, Chelsea fans and Chelsea FC, owe a lot to Frank Lampard (b) He’s a great bloke, class footballer (c) I love this Lampard. Just wanted to get these things out of the way because obviously this piece is meant to be a critique of the effectiveness and contribution of Frank Lampard these days.

I remember writing a post in August 2007 titled ‘Frank Lampard – How good is he nowadays?’. That was four years back. Lampard was 28 years old then. Jose Mourinho was our manager then who was picking Lampard to start match after match. The question was the same. Excerpt from that article of about 4 years back is below:

If he is not in form, why do we have to play him, especially when you have multiple options for his central midfielder role. Mikel, Diarra or Makelele can be used and given the current set-up they would return the same output that Frank returns. When Ballack returns from injury, only Lampard’s merit, and not anything else, should find his name on the teamsheet. Jose did say that he does not pick the team but the players (and their performance) picks themselves. If this is truly the case, either Lamps should improve or see himself on the bench. And ye, if he has an injury, then what’s he doing on the pitch? He should stay away from playing and aggravating his injury.

What hurts is not his lack of goals or assists but only his loss of possession and that too in very crucial areas that would normally have the opposition cut through you. Someone playing in the midfield role should be lot more wary and careful of what damage they can do to their team. With two in-form wingers and in-form strikers, do we need an attack-minded midfielder or a neutral minded one?

For sure, Jose seems to be thinking the former way and that’s why you still see Frank on the pitch and that too as the captain. If I were Jose, I’d rest (not drop, mind you!) Lampard for a few games and let Essien and Mikel marshal the midfield. But Jose can’t whip him like to does to Mikel. We certainly have to respect a player of Lampard’s calibre and also for his contribution to our achievements. At no cost, Lampard should feel ill-treated for a short loss of form, as he knows he was in top form for successive seasons and he has certainly built up loads of goodwill to his advantage.

In short, rest him for awhile and let someone else play but he’s still a very important player and he is part of the core of our team because he is one of those players who has it ‘in the blood’!

After the above, he returned to form and produced some brilliant performances and even won the Chelsea player of the year award in 2009. By criticising or questioning his performances, neither is he being disrespected or nor is he being written off. Frank should and would come back to form but what’s not acceptable is keeping someone beyond any sort of criticism. Even Terry has been subject to a lot of flak for various reasons including footballing ones. Whereas Lampard has been almost untouchable – both from a selection point of view as well as from a criticism point of view.

I think we’re at a stage where we no longer have the luxury of not talking about this. There are some very important questions that needs to be answered. The way I see it, below are the statements or questions to be considered on the Lampard situation.

Frank Lampard is not in form

Let’s not beat around the bush. He’s not in form. And he’s not been in form for some time now. Different people have different measuring scales for players being in form. For a central midfielder, in my view, what matters is the influence he exerts on our team and our play. Of late, Frank’s influence has been waning. As a key midfielder, he needs to operate as the fulcrum of the team as he has before. Right now, he is mostly invisibile, leave alone influential.

His contribution to the team has been dwindling

Franks’s goals have dried up and so are his assists. If my memory serves me right, he lost his venomous long shot from 06-07 season itself where Essien had to play in defence during our injury crisis in defence. He no longer scores from distance. His free kicks have become very poor that each time we get a free kick I’m hoping with Drogba or Alex takes it. His corners don’t go past the first defender half the time and if they do they’re not threatening. He’s not tackling as much as he used to. Overall, his hard contributions have come down.

He holds too important a position to be not contributing enough

Lampard’s role is so crucial to our playing style. When we’re on the ball, most probably Mikel wouldn’t get involved so much which means Lampard and the other midfielder need to organise the attacks. We can’t afford to have someone at his position/role stay out of form for too long. All those matches where we think we didn’t create enough opportunities, watch out for Frank’s movements and passes.

Are we getting value for the speculated salary of £151k a week?

How many top players can you get at £151k a week? Doesn’t it work out to roughly £8m a year for one player just in the form of wages? That’s a lot of money even for Roman Abramovich. Are we getting performances worth £151k a year? This might sound like a very cold question but trust me at some point these questions will be asked by the club too.

He should be treated with respect and grace

Without doubt. Like I said, he’s a club legend. He needs to be treated with respect. He can’t be told in the morning that he’s not playing in the afternoon. There’s a way to treat legends and he should be dealt with in the same way. We should do it in such a way that undermines his contribution to the club and its successes.

A short break or a rest from starting would definitely rejuvenate him

It’s a simple but effective solution. Anyone who’s going through a rough patch will be benefitted by watching the game from the bench, unless it’s an issue of confidence. For Frank, in my opinion, it’s neither ability nor confidence, it’s just that he’s going through a rough patch just to prove that the law of averages does catch up even on the most consistent performers.

He need not be a constant starter

At 33, Frank should be not be surprised if he’s told that he would be a squad player going forward. That pretty much means that he’s not guaranteed to start every game. He shouldn’t be surprised if he’s not chosen for a game. He should be comfortable to come in as a sub. He should try to contribute to the team whenever he’s given an opportunity.

The one big question is – “Is Frank Lampard so indispensible to the playing eleven that he needs to start every single match?”

Sir Alex has his way of deal with big personalities at Man Utd. We know what he did with legends like Keane, Cantona, Beckham, Nistelrooy etc. Pep Guardiola did it to Eto. Jose Mourinho did it at Inter to Stankovic and Ibrahmovic. When Jose came to Real Madrid, he told Raul and Guti in clear terms that they are not in his first team plans and let them leave. Raul for Madrid is much bigger than Lampard for Chelsea. Probably, Lampard is in the same situation as Raul was, in 2010 August.

The responsibility of dealing with this situation is not with Frank Lampard though. It’s firmly with Andre Villas Boas. The important thing here is Andre Villas Boas is not as big a personality as a Fergie or a Jose or a Pep. He doesn’t have the pedigree as that of those managers to take a big decision in his early days over a fans-favourite and a club hero.

We know that Boas has made some very impressive moves in his first couple of months. He’s taking Chelsea FC in the right direction. I’m extremely excited about Chelsea’s prospects under Boas. One of the key steps in building the Chelsea FC squad for the future is to find a workable solution for the senior players. Players like Frank Lampard are not only the crowd-pullers and the shirt-sellers but also the talismen and symbol of this club. We need their guidance and experience but we don’t play millions just for that. We need performances on the pitch too. Therefore, it’s not going to be an easy job for Boas to resolve this situation.

I know what Boas needs to do. He needs to tell Frank Lampard that he might be a squad player going forward and would be used not as frequently as before. Frank needs to stay motivated and continue to train like nothing’s changed and support and guide the players that are competing for his place. I don’t quite know how Boas would do it. That’s his job. I’m fully confident that he’s very competent and he would deal with this situation very very well. That said, all this is not going to happen in the next few days. It might take weeks. One more midfield signing would almost force the situation.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful. This is not a shameless show of ingratitude. I like Lampard myself. I still have and wear the No.8 jersey. He’s still my screensaver on my macbook. He’s on my lock screen on my iPad and iPhone. I love to play as Frank Lampard in PES. He’s my most favourite Chelsea player. I want Frank to do well, but when he’s not, particularly for long periods, I want that situation to be dealt with.

Now, I’d like to know what’s your take on this topic: