Every year around about October I get very, very excited. It's been happening now for nigh on eight years and long may it continue. There are very few game franchises that stand the test of time. Tomb Raider fell by the wayside, Burnout is starting to look tired, even Mario seems to have lost that cheeky skip in his step, but Sports Interactive are still going strong with their Championship Manager (now known as Football Manager) franchise.

When Sports Interactive decided to change their publishers from Eidos to Sega in the summer of last year, nobody was sure how they would fare. Eidos retained the Championship Manager brand, whilst Sports Interactive retained the entire team who created the CM series and resolved to continue their football management PC simulation franchise with a new brand, Football Manager. Whilst Football Manager 2005 soared to the top of the PC charts last year, Eidos released Championship Manager 5, designed by a whole new development team, which bombed in the shops. As Eidos lick their wounds and decide on whether to release another Championship Manager game, Sega release the second coming of their new franchise, Football Manager 2006, and I for one, can't contain my joy.

For anyone who's never played any of the Champ Man series or last year's FM05, Sports Interactive have specialised since 1997 in creating games which allow you to control pretty much any football team you would like. As the years have passed they've included random leagues such as Croatia and Belarus, all the while building up their football world database. And that's basically what Football Manager 2006 is - the biggest database on world football.

The Sports Interactive team have scouts all around the world who monitor each of the different clubs and rate all the players, feeding back all of their findings to Sports Interactive, who input this into the game. What they arrive with is the ability to not only check out how good Wayne Rooney is but even browse the ability of teams in the far depths of Europe, in countries you can't even pronounce, like Kazakhstan. The information is so accurate that rumour has it that managers like Bolton's Sam Allardyce use the Football Manager database as a rough guide as to where to send out his talent scouts. Just last season, on having played some obscure Eastern European team in the Champions League qualifiers, Arsenal striker Robin van Persie was asked as to whether he'd known much about the team before playing them to which he replied, "I knew a fair bit, as I'd checked them out on Football Manager before we left". So as you can see, this game is so accurate that even the footballing fraternity itself is hooked.

So, when you boot up the game your first choice is which club to manage. Your choice does not have to be binding, as throughout the game you can apply for different jobs at other clubs depending on how successful you are. If you're starting out at an amateur level, I'd recommend that you try a Man Utd or an Arsenal, so that you can get the taste of victory early on.

When you've chosen your club you're brought to a News screen. This screen announces that you've joined the club and details your club Chairman's expectations for the year ahead. As you move through the game this screen tells you what's what in the world of football and your own team; what players you have injured, what games you have coming up, which players have been signed by other clubs, how much money you have left to buy new players and so on. It's basically the interface that keeps you informed of both your own and your AI competitors' progress. From this news screen you can access the entire game interface in one click.

The first step to take is to view your team. When you click on your team, it lists all of the players that you currently own. Selecting a player brings up everything from his contract details, whether he's happy to play for you, what he's worth, what position he plays, any clubs who are interested in buying him - this list is endless. This screen also allows you to see how good he is. Each players is rated on a scale of 1 to 20 on around 40 key stats including Passing, Dribbling, Jumping, Heading, Long Shots, Finishing and Composure to, name but a few. From browsing these stats you can work out whether the player is any good and also how to best use him in your team. For example, a striker with a Jumping and Heading score of 15 or above would make an ideal target man up front for your team. Or a midfielder with a Passing and Creativity score of over 15 would be perfect for using as your playmaker in the middle of the park. As you look through your team, you can work out who you'd like to keep and who you'd like to sell. You can also loan your players out should you like to hang on to them but maybe don't see them as featuring in your first team plans over the coming season.

Having sold or loaned out everyone you want out the way, it's time for your team tactics. The tactics engine in FM06 is unrivalled by any game on any platform. You can choose from a huge selection of formations or even create your own. Not only can you tell your team to play in an exact way, indicating to play a counter attacking long ball game for example, you can even tell each player how to perform. For example, you can tell your right and left back defenders to run whenever they get the ball and try their damnedest to fire in as many crosses whenever possible. Anything you can do in real football is here. When you've worked out your tactics, it's then easy to see where the gaps in your team lie, such as finding that you only have one left back, so should he get injured, your team could be in dire straits. So what do you do? You buy in some talent.

The transfer market system in FM06 is awesome. I can spend hours browsing through the options available. You can search in everything from Age, Contract Status, Position, Nationality and you can even locate players by isolating they key players' stats you would like, such as Passing or Creativity. There're over 270,000 players in the game, making for plenty of talent at your fingertips to choose from. Should a club accept your offer for a player, you enter a contract offer with said player in which you can choose how much you're willing to pay him, how long his contract will last for, whether you'd like to offer him a signing on fee and you can also offer him further incentive such as monetary bonus for whenever he scores or sets up a goal. Like I said before, this game has everything.

Your team's ready, you've bought and sold everyone you'd like to, your tactics are hopefully spot on, so now it's onto the matches themselves. As in real football, all of your usual fixtures are in there from league and cup matches to European and national fixtures. As you click though the game these fixtures arrive and you enter the match engine screen. You can choose to watch the whole match (not recommended as this would take you 90 mins for each fixture), extended highlights, key highlights or just to read the commentary. In the highlights mode you are provided with a top down view of the pitch and each of the players appears as a round dot with their names appearing above the dot whenever they touch the ball or are directly involved in a piece of play. It sounds pretty crap, I know, but in reality the system works a dream.

As the game takes place you can see the ball being passed from player to player and the positioning and direction of the ball changes depending on whether the pass or shot is lofted or curled. So although the players are 2D represented, while the ball zips and shoots about in glorious 3D. This makes for some compelling 30 yard shots curling into the top corner of the net. I've seen football management games, such as the yearly EA effort, try to show you the game with FIFA style graphics and it just doesn't work. Before long, you're watching the same goals shooting into the back of the net. With the FM06 engine, it leaves a lot more to the imagination and you can almost picture Thierry Henry wheeling away in delight as he hammers in a powerful 20 yard drive from the edge of the box. There's also a new addition to FM06 in that you're now able to give your players half time team talks. So if you're Man Utd and three nil down at home at half time to West Brom, you can give your players a bollocking and watch them hopefully pull it back in the second half.

It's hard to do justice to everything that there is in this game in one review. I haven't even been able to cover the facts that you can pick your own training schedules, arrange friendly tournaments for your team abroad, manage your own national team, send your scouts out to search for the new Wayne Rooney and more. The best way to explain it is that everything that an Alex Ferguson or an Arsene Wenger does in their day-to-day job, you can do yourself in Football Manager 2006. Whilst graphically the game may look like nothing more than a glorified spreadsheet and although it lacks any in-game music besides a few cheers and claps in the game engine, that's really not what this game is about; it's the unbelievable depth, the fact that you can and will play it constantly for a year until the next version is released in a year's time. This game is so good it's an addiction. In the last year alone, it was cited as one of the key determining factors in three divorce cases in the UK! Either you love it or you hate it. Love it and you've a friend for life. Any time you're bored, sitting in on a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon (of which we have plenty coming up) or even watching your favourite team on Sky Sports, having FM06 there to fill the time is an absolute pleasure.

As I'm sure you can guess, I'm in love with Football Manager 2006 [No divorce for you two then! Ed]. I'm already a season in on my favourite Aberdeen team and although I got relegated, I'm bang up for the challenge of winning promotion in my next season. For a mere 30 quid, I have hundreds of hours of fun lying ahead and I can honestly say that having played computer games for nigh on 16 years, Football Manager 2006 is quite honestly the best I've ever played.