Football is a game all about decisions - and with every decision comes a risk. Arsene Wenger's half a million pound gamble on seventeen-year-old striker Nicolas Anelka - good decision. The choice by some complete clot to try and break into Duncan Ferguson's house while he was at home - bad decision (the Scottish psycho battered him like a Mars Bar in a Glasgow chip shop). After the success of Football Manager 2008, developers Sports Interactive had a very important decision to make. Once again their game had sold in vast numbers but they were starting to become the victims of their own success; their impeccable talent for creating an all-encompassing management sim meant that every season it was becoming harder and harder to find ways to improve their creation. Rather than resorting to throwing in a free set of steak knives with every purchase, SI decided to take a risk that - within the genre - was bigger than popping on your polka-dot PJs and sneaking into 'Big Dunc's' place for a surprise pyjama party; after years of watching the mixed results produced by the likes of FIFA Manager and LMA Manager, they finally decided to include a 3D match engine - and while FM09 ensures that the series remains the best football management incarnation around, it achieves this despite the new addition rather than because of it.

The first time that you see the 3D engine in action, you may wonder if you've been hit by the team bus and woken up in a 1980s footballing version of Ashes to Ashes, with Big Ron Atkinson as DCI Gene Hunt. The different stadiums are nothing more than blocky, black and grey backdrops, reminiscent of those from the likes of Match Day and Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on the C64 but without the hordes of pixellated people who used to pack the stands in those games. Someone appears to have issued an edict that in FM09, all matches are to be played behind closed doors, with generic crowd roars piped in through the tannoy system for atmospheric effect. The players are small and blurry, and beyond their basic skin colours they have no individual characteristics whatsoever - so you've got no hope of seeing the Portuguese Michael Flatley work his patented magic for Man Utd.

All of this wouldn't matter half as much if the matches played out believably - but for the most part, they don't; the benefits of SI's links with SEGA's Virtua Striker team are difficult to spot, as players seem to hover just above the ground without any real weight to them and tackles resemble games of ring-around-the-roses. The engine also seems to struggle to recreate believable match action; goals that come after the ball has rebounded back off the keeper or from long-range shots that the game forces in by exaggerating the laws of physics occur far too often. The most telling moments, however, are those when a player receives the ball with no one around him and everyone on the pitch stands still; you can almost hear the game desperately crunching the chaos theory numbers as it attempts to replicate what would happen in a real game before finally giving up and having the player just knock the ball off to his nearest teammate rather than driving into the acres of space in front of him. Besides all of this - and some clunky transitions between stops in play - there is also a range of glitches, such as players walking through advertising hoardings when taking corners, moving to stand off the pitch, or the short periods when the action is reduced to a speed slower than Sami Hyppia can manage if he has to run more than five yards at any one time.

It isn't all bad though, as the 3D matches come with some nice options, like a choice of camera angles, a TV mode that clears the screen of everything apart from the action and the bits of information you want surrounding it, and a time bar that enables you to rewind the play to any previous point; it's just a shame that when the game occasionally manages to put everything together on the pitch, resulting in a team creating a flowing, intuitive move that shows a real cohesion between players, the action looks choreographed rather than like it is occurring naturally. Furthermore, when the engine's rudimentary construction is placed right next to the vast swathes of detail in the rest of the game, it's a bit like your club appointing Joe Barton as their community liaison officer: the two things just don't go together at all. At least the 2D engine remains available - and let's not forget that this certainly wasn't perfect on its debut either - so if you dislike SI's first attempt at a 3D rendition then you can revert to this mode until the new match engine is refined in future editions.

In contrast to its attempt at 3D trickery, when FM09 returns to its home ground of stats and spreadsheets, its amazing levels of authenticity follow suit, to such an extent that you can almost catch a pungent hint of Deep Heat wafting out of your PC. This year, both the amount of detail and the support structure around you are better than ever before, so you can choose your level of micro-management within areas such as training and searching for players. Throughout a season you are inundated with pertinent reports of injuries from your physiotherapist, youth- and reserve-team performances from your coaches, and potential signings and loaned players from your scouts. After you, the most central figure in this network is your Assistant Manager, who has now become a real right-hand man. Upon beginning your new job, one of the first emails you receive is from your assistant, who breaks down the squad you've inherited, and before each game he provides you with a summary of matters such as your opponents' likely set up, any potential danger-men and even the style of play to which the pitch is best suited.

Probably the most valuable role that your assistant manager provides, however, is the compiling of his match reports; updated minute by minute as each game progresses, these analyse different aspects of the composition of your side, such as performance and tactics, providing information that aids your decisions. The brilliance of these reports - and the reason that they're better than something like a ProZone type feature - is not only that they help to focus your attention upon a handful of important details out of all those that might be relevant but also that they're tailored to your abilities, never giving you advice that you cannot act upon. If you're losing and your assistant's report tells you that one of your players is being wasteful with the ball then you can substitute him or instruct him to keep it simple; if you're winning but your assistant suggests that you're getting overrun at the back then you can drop your midfielders deeper or employ time-wasting tactics.

The transfer system is more complete than ever with its vast array of different sale, purchase and contractual options acting as a stark reminder that, at its bottom line, football is just as much a business as a billionaire's boat party. Only a tiny majority of all agreements involve one team giving another a pile of cash up front for a player, as facilities like cash plus player swaps, deferred payments and loans with options to purchase bring flexibility to negotiations. For FM09, Sports Interactive has also reworked the transfer model to make all the glorified human trafficking more authentic; sides from lower leagues look to sign young prospects and reliable veterans or make loan moves from squad player in the divisions above, while the big hitters are falling over themselves to throw money at top-rated talent faster than Didier Drogba does at Burnley fans. A prime example of this is the way that you'll see Manchester City burning money on red hot players like Andrei Arshavin in the 2008 summer transfer window, thanks to their injection of petrol dollars. The rumours surrounding all this activity, attributed to real life sources such as BBC Sport and Football365.com, are collated on their own separate page, where the media attempts to fan the flames with a range of tactics that include trying to get managers to make comments that they can spin into column inches.

To help with this, FM09 gives you and your peers greater chances than ever to put your foot in it by making your dealings with the press more engaging and exciting than before; these are real extensions of football, played for high stakes and high rewards. You can attempt to use the media to your advantage by indulging in some mind games with a star player or manager that you're soon going up against or unsettling a player who you want to sign. Depending upon the side that you're managing, these efforts can backfire just as often as they succeed, resulting in you losing the match or the chance of the transfer and, whether you want to or not, there's now more time to discuss your successes or failures with the tattle merchants, thanks to the introduction of pre- and post-match press conferences.

At these outlets, media giants such as The Guardian and Sky Sports put questions to you that you can respond to with either "no comment" or a selection of multiple-choice answers. Often, the language of the replies is a little too marketing survey-esque ("I strongly agree" etc.) but there's also a box at the bottom of the screen into which you can insert a more specific answer. Watch your typing though, because the key recognition is ultra sensitive and coming out with a statement that reads "III gguarrantttee aa wiiinn" doesn't make you come across as drunk with confidence so much as just drunk. After a few questions you're given the option to call it a day whenever you like or you can keep going until you've bored everyone to the exits and it's just you and the cleaner left. You even have the option to storm out at any point, although this is probably not something that you should make a habit of if you don't want the door that's slamming behind you to be the one that suddenly leaves you standing in the car park, clutching your P45.

Whether you choose to stick it out or flounce out, you receive details straight away of how the press has reported what you've said, often finding meaning in your words you didn't intend, and you're also told how your squad has reacted as a whole to your words and whether any individual players have been particularly affected. Just as importantly, the game keeps close track of the views of the other main parties with an interest in the team. Your fans take much more volatile, knee-jerk reactions to the twists and turns of each season while the new board confidence system sees the directors adopting a more level-headed, long term view, based upon things such as changes in the prestige of the club or whether they feel the players are behind you.

Amongst all this good there are some pockets of irritation. The wording options for team talks aren't as useful as you might like and while injuries are definitely accurate (everyone's favourite injury-victim, Emile Heskey, regularly doesn't last the first forty-five minutes of the opening game of the season), they occur far too frequently, often hitting your star players and the areas of your squad with the least cover. The things that make FM09 great though are the same ones that have always served the series so well; with over fifty playable countries and approximately three hundred and fifty thousand staff and players, Sports Interactive are basically giving you an interactive edition of the footballing Doomsday Book, whose depth is combined with a finesse that makes the many hours spent with it engrossing rather than enraging.

If you're new to the series then Football Manager 2009 is definitely the edition to go for, as the guidance from the wizards and the profusion of tip boxes will help you like never before. However, if you're a returning regular then you have a decision to make; if you're buying mainly for the new match engine then you're at risk of serious disappointment - at least you can console yourself with the knowledge that you're getting easily the most three-dimensional football management sim that money can buy, just not in the one way that still eludes both this game and the rest of its peers.

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