The long wait is finally over! Girlfriends and football haters should look away now as Football Manager is back and is bigger, better and more addictive than ever before.

For those unfamiliar with the Football Manager phenomenon, it is basically the ultimate football management game, allowing football fans up and down the land live the dream of managing their beloved team from the comfort of their own computer chair. 

It is all make believe of course and its appeal to non-believers is hard to grasp as you don’t even control the players; once you’ve picked you’ve picked your imaginary players, assembled your imaginary team and sent them out onto the imaginary pitch you simply sit back and watch as the game unfolds. 

It is basically a pure game of chance but is devastatingly addictive none the less and has been known to take over people’s lives.

The latest version, released last Monday, doesn’t disappoint and has a whole host of new features to keep gamers intrigued.  Foremost amongst these is its new 3D match engine which allows you to watch your virtual team in the splendour of 3D.  The 3D engine is fantastic when your team is doing well but is painful viewing when your players appear to be doing the complete opposite to your pregame instructions.

A nice touch with the new 3D engine is the facility to customise your desktop to have all the info you want to have displayed on the screen without having to leave the match screen as you had to do on the previous version. Those fearful that their PCs might not be able to cope with the powerful 3D match engine should not worry as the old 2D engine is also available.

Other new features of not include increased assistant manager interaction and greater discussion with the media. The assistant manager’s feedback is particularly useful, and can improve your team’s performance if you listen. You can also get more involved in the transfer gossip which was actually quite realistic. Virtually the entire Arsenal squad were linked with moves away from the club while Real Madrid continued to test Ferguson’s resolve over Ronaldo with inappropriate advances.

Of course the squads are also all up-to-date with all the summer moves incorporated including those on deadline day such as Berbatov to Man United.  For the first time the game is also linked to a new downloadable stream content delivery system which allows you to download the latest version of the game and stay up-to-date.

The game plays very smoothly and is realistic in most respects, but it is by no means faultless. The injury lists are a bit exaggerated - at one stage I had 9 first team players out and  I also found that there were just too many options which made the game a little over complicated. But in this is the only football management game worth having until this time next year and the release of Football Manager 2010.

Price: £39.99 (£29.99 on Play.com)