What Premier Manager 2012 does do reasonably well is deal with formations and tactics. Either a player is over the moon with a contract offer or there are threats of walking away – often over relatively small sums of money. If you know who you want and which club they’re at then it’s relatively simple to buy them but the negotiation system is quite simple and there are fewer shades of grey in negotiations than I’d like. It’s often fiddly to find players though and scouting, or “researching”, players is a soulless exercise. Transfers are quick, relatively easy and occasionally fun to play out and there seems to be a good amount of cash thrown around to keep things fresh. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to do this via the XMB as in-game music is sadly not supported.

It’s the sort of game which doesn’t require sound at all though, so it’s not a big issue to just turn the volume all the way down and play your own music. The background music has just enough character to become intensely irritating within about five minutes of the repeating loop chiming up. It’s just a little odd that it’s bound to a shoulder button. After a little time they do become more natural and the main menu, which is called up using the R1 button, acts in a similar way to the PS3’s own XMB. It’s not a great start, the menus are, initially, quite unintuitive and difficult to navigate. That said, there have been some casual successes on iOS and PSP and now the Premier Manager franchise returns to the PlayStation 3 for another run at the title. It seems like the genre grew too complex and intricate until console controls just weren’t quite enough for a comprehensive management sim. Football Management games on consoles haven’t had much success in recent times.

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