This is the Special One. Football manager games were much of a muchness before the Special One came along and gave them a kick up the rear, bringing with it an unprecedented amount of detail and tinkering that would cause Claudio Ranieri to break out in hives. That Special One was Championship Manager, which after some tinkering of its own, has come to the PSP under the slightly clunky Football Manager Handheld guise.

There are two things a football manager game has to avoid before it can fall into the category of being ‘good’ – it has to avoid ridiculous transfers (LMA Manager series) and it has to avoid turning the management game into a war of bank balances (erm, LMA Manager series). Football Manager Handheld effortlessly sidesteps those two problems by remaining rooted in realism that would be described as gritty, if such an adjective could be applied to a football manager game. It can’t, so we’ll just have to explain what we mean instead. Signing players would usually be a case of clicking “Yes, I want to buy!” as though you’re window-shopping in a Barclayssponsored eBay Premiership. In Football Manager Handheld, signing players results in endless paperwork, clauses to be discussed, reassurances to the player himself and even then, loyalty to the top clubs ensures you can’t snap up Gerrard, Henry, Ronaldinho and Kaka in your debut season merely by waving a Russian cheque-book under their nose.

This leads us to the second point, which is that there’s more to the management game than piling up the pounds until you can thwart other clubs with your financial muscle. It’s about motivation; it’s about tactics; it’s about flexibility. It’s about knowing how to deal with a goalkeeper crisis when you’ve sent your number one home because you’re worried his flu will infect the rest of the team. It’s about setting your throw-ins to quick, pushing your offside trap as far up the pitch as possible and keeping passes short and fast for a killer counter attack. It’s about sticking Peter Crouch up front and setting the long ball slider as far right as possible. The short version of all this meandering amble is that it’s about using your brain and not your bank balance. You might be an economic Hercules but you’ll still be out of a job if the board of directors aren’t happy with you come June. This means Football Manager Handheld is hard. It’s hard because you often press the wrong button thanks to the quirky controls, so you spend far too long on each menu screen, trying to remember which button is cancel. Whoops! You just told Emile Heskey you’ll pay him £100,000 a week for his services! And so you end up a tentative, careful creature, squinting to see what the text at the bottom of the screen tells you the buttons do. It’s an unavoidable problem, given the heritage of this series lies in the keyboard and mouse combination, but it’s a problem nevertheless and we like moaning.

In any case, the game itself is hard. You can’t throw your 11 best players on the pitch and sit back soaking up the results and plaudits. You have to take into account the team’s chemistry, how they fit into the overall scheme of things and your own tactics. Buying a nippy striker is useless without a playmaker behind him with a high pass-rating, and the playmaker needs the pace of the game slowed down to allow for the killer pass, so you want long, slow passing while giving your playmaker the green light to do as he pleases. It’s no exaggeration to say you can spend longer on the tactics screen adjusting players’ positions and instructions than you do on the sidelines, head in hands as your plans all go wrong.

You also have to take into consideration that the. Loading. Times. Are. A. Bit. Wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… annoying. It’s the curse of the PSP back in the form of a small blue box with a tiny splash of text informing you that the game is processing. The sedate pace of Football Manager Handheld means it doesn’t bother you that much because football management isn’t designed to be played out at breakneck speed anyway and in truth, it’s faster than it should be. But again, it’s a problem and we like moaning.

However, Football Manager Handheld is the Special One. Try as much as you like, moan all you want, you can’t knock the Special One off its stride. Talk to it about loading times and it will say the PSP has it in for it and treats Football Manager Handheld differently than the other games. Talk to it about wonky controls and it will still insist that it’s the best game overall before storming off in a huff. The sad thing is, even for all its flaws and bravado, you know its right. And so you keep playing. It’s just that damn good.

Ryan King