In the modern world, the job of professional football manager isn't as easy as it once was. Gone are the days of simply taking training sessions during the week before donning your sheepskin coat to prowl the touchline at 3pm on a Saturday. Now you've got one of your players writing a book in which he claims he caught you changing into women's clothing in your office. Meanwhile, you've just found out that your top transfer target has been poached by Real Madrid because they were looking for someone to make the tea and your chairman's announced that he's arranged for two young South Americans to join the squad, but you're not to ask how he got them. To top it all off, your stadium's on the verge of being condemned after part of the family enclosure disappeared down an old mineshaft, you've gone five games without a win, the board have given you the dreaded vote of confidence, your star African midfielder has disappeared on his way back from international duty, you've just heard that the manager of the team you're facing next is planning to use a formation you've never heard of before and you can't even prowl the touchline any more because you're confined to the bleeding technical area. [And if you think that's bad, you should see what the manager of Harchester United has to put up with - it's far from a Dream Team! Dragons forever! Purple Ed].

Every one of the fully qualified real-life managers, and Gareth Southgate, have to deal with things similar to the above and even more bizarre on a daily basis, and must wonder why anyone would find enjoyment in recreating their lives. Some of them may be amazed to find out, then, that it's not just a small band of strange individuals that want to give up large amounts of their time pretending to run a team, but thousands of people all around the world. Helping to feed this hunger is Sports Interactive, who has returned again for the start of a new season with Football Manager 2007, the latest edition of their seminal series.

Many of you will now know that, up until a few years ago, Sports Interactive were the creators of the hugely successful Championship Manager series for Eidos - that was until Sega managed to pull off one of the greatest transfer coups of all time by persuading the developers to move to them. Edios kept the Championship Manager name, whilst Sports Interactive took basically everything else of any value, tweaked things a bit and released the result as the first Football Manager game. It's fair to say that since that original outing, Football Manager hasn't changed in any huge way. The most obvious thing that has always set it apart from its rivals is the amount of information it contains and this new outing is no exception; with over 50 countries and 290,000 players and staff, FM07 has more data than a NASA space launch. But just having lots of names and figures doesn't make a game great - and the true genius behind the series is twofold.

Firstly there's the process the developers have gone through to decide what information to include. Although FM07 includes too many details to try and count, every single one is about as objectively correct as you're going to get. For example, you're looking for a striker and find a veteran and an eighteen-year-old who roughly fit the bill. The older guy has great finishing but the youngster isn't that far behind, who's also quicker than a hiccup and has lower wage demands, meaning that you'd have extra funds for that goalkeeper you also need; so what do you do? On top of this, despite the wealth of facts and figures that have been crammed in tighter than Neville Southall in a goalkeeper's jersey, there's no wasted space in FM07, as everything that has been included is relevant to the title's aims. When you first put the disk in and the game begins to load there's no flashy intro sequence or jazzy pop tune to tap your foot to while you wait. If, however, you decide to manage a side in English League Two and you want to hire a coach, rather than having one or two to select from (and possibly a small number of stats for each), everyone in the world of football who fits the bill is available, together with a dissection of their abilities, history and wage requirements. This is exactly how it should be, as management sims are all about making decisions, and the closer a game gets to giving you the same options a manager would have for real then the more authentic it is.

Secondly, and even more important, is the way that all these pieces of information have been put together to create such an enthralling experience. In this respect the talent that the developers have shouldn't be underestimated for a second. There are thousands of words in the dictionary and anyone can pick them out at random, but it takes someone with exceptional skill to bring them together to create poetry. In the same way Sports Interactive have taken all these pieces of data and used their abilities to put them together in a way that results in something amazing. Sports Interactive haven't just spent the last twelve months locating an eraser and then holding various meetings to decide who was going to use it to remove the '2006' from the front of last year's game box and replacing it with '2007'; it seems almost insulting to confirm that club, staff and player movements up to the end of the most recent transfer window have all been included, as these should be taken as a given. Beyond them, however, there are some noticeable enhancements in FM07.

The first of these is the overhaul that has been given to the scouting system. In a game with so many details, the fact that scouts had relatively few stats made this an area ripe for development, and Sports Interactive have not disappointed; each scout now has his knowledge broken down even further to show, such as the parts of the world where he has his finger on the footballing pulse and also the countries where he wouldn't know a David Beckham from a David Furnish. All this means that you can now allocate your resources much more efficiently and achieve much better results, whether they be more accurate information on your next opponent or the discovery of a wonder kid playing in the Antarctic second division.

Another important change is the introduction of the feeder/parent club option, which allows arrangements to be created between bigger and smaller teams to maximise their resources. The large outfit gets a chance to seed their young players and possibly the first option on any of the feeder side's talent. The smaller club, on the other hand, gets financial assistance and the temporary use of a standard of footballer they could never usually attract.

The final major addition is the improved player interaction options; now you have the ability to give pre-game team talks, something that was slightly startling by its absence before. On top of this you can also interact more with the players at your own club, by asking them to recommend new signings for example, and also with those of other sides, who you can praise or criticise as you see fit. Care is needed whatever you choose to do however, as the game is so sophisticated that there is an effect every time you open your mouth. So you might want to stop and think before you give your young, talented winger the hairdryer treatment after a mediocre first half, or before you praise an opposing team's midfielder and tapping up allegations start to fly.

There are also some smaller changes that the developers have made that are also very welcome. The complexities of the youth team have been added to, so that at the start of every season you now receive a new selection of first year youngsters ready for development into tomorrow's stars. If you like to micro-manage every footballing aspect of your club this presents you with more food for thought, as you're forced at points to make to make tough decisions about who you're going to keep and who you're going to cut to free up a valuable place that could be filled by the next Pelé. As well as this there's now the possibility of the club being taken over by outside investors and a new board being installed. If this happens then the team's future - and yours - are in the hands of the footballing gods, as for every Portsmouth there's a West Ham, and even the odd Hearts.

As much praise as FM07 deserves, there are still a few things that it could do better. To start with, although the in-match graphics are great for tactical analysis of each game, they remain incredibly basic. For a title whose currency is realism you sometimes feel that until Football Manager can produce the same thing with accurate 3D players who you can watch from the touchline or the stand, the series will never quite achieve perfection. Similarly, whilst FM07 is a game for quiet contemplation and as such is better for the fact that it doesn't have any in-game music, there is a distinct lack of atmosphere during matches, due to the incredibly limited selection of generic crowd noises. Finally, because of its size, FM07 is probably never a game you could have a quick go on and, for the same reason, although the developers have done well with the tutorial features it will probably never be a title that newcomers find easy to get into.

When you've got a series that already has such a high level of quality, the real skill lies in not changing all those things that work perfectly well and ensuring that the adjustments and additions you do make improve on what has come before. In both these regards Football Manager 2007 can be considered a success. The major new features fit in well and are up to the very high standards of everything that has been retained from previous outings. Other minor tweaks have helped make this new edition that little bit smoother and mean that that FM07 isn't just a management game - it's a football world that will draw you in and envelop you. The greatest praise it can be given is that, out of all the management simulators out there, this by far feels the most like real life, and this is solely down to the skill and dedication of the Sports Interactive who fully appreciate how complex a manger's life really is. [Now if only Alex Dempsey can evade that murder investigation long enough to lead Harchester into the Champions League… Ed].

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).