Of course, sitting on a bus to work telling 11 millionaires to win a game of football isn’t without its merits, but for a more substantial duration – a bus journey to the airport perhaps – Football Manager Handheld just isn’t an attractive option. Surely, you’d think, management-sim wizard that it is, Sports Interactive is aware of this better than anyone, and yet it continues to release this watered down, diet version of its classic title on the PSP every year. It may succeed in convincing casual onlookers that Sony’s handheld technology is better than it is, but for the initiated the shortcomings are glaringly obvious and frustrating.

What makes this particular edition even less enticing is the clear lack of improvement on last year’s effort. Okay, so it may have ditched that mucky green skin for an altogether shinier one, and it may have added a reserves side to each team, but for the most part this is the same as last year’s afterthought. The majority of the flaws can be explained simply though: unlike a PC or PS3, the PSP can’t offer the processing power required to make a half-decent management game.

Perhaps it’s slightly unfair to compare the two games. It is arguably, in some respects, like comparing the PSone’s GTA to the PS3’s. But then, unlike GTA or a wealth of other examples, management sims only work if they have a big processor behind them doing the maths. They need to convince to be any good at all, and the PSP just isn’t up to the task. Sad, but true.

In its defence, there’s no Championship Manager-style nonsense going on – all scores and transfers are reasonable enough – but there’s no feeling of you having a real impact on outcomes. You can’t fiddle with the tactics too much and you can’t yell at the players. There’s so little interaction, in fact, that sometimes it barely feels as if you’re playing at all. And this is all down to the PSP being unable to do the job – in order for the game to function on any level, corners have had to be cut, touches and elements that make the full game so addictive (indepth scouting, extensive media activity, believable cultivation of young players and so on) are left out, making the whole experience rather disappointing. Again.

Aaron Asadi