What is it? FA Premier League Football Manager 99 is the sequel of FIFA Soccer Manager, and is also EA Sports' second soccer management game. Your role in this game will be to manage and coach your team and guide him to the right way to win succeed in all competitions. What's new? Nearly all the features that FIFA Soccer Manager didn't have or lacked detail, will be new or improved in FA Premier League Football Manager 99. First of all, EA Sports got an exclusive FA Premier League license for two whole years. This means that we will see the most accurate team names, nick names, players, logos, stadiums, trophies, etc. There will also be a new communication system called EAMail which will provide realistic communication for all player, manager, transfer, coaching and business contacts. Some soccer management games either lacked from management options details, like Premier Manager 98 or from coaching options, like Championship Manager 97/98. But FA Premier League Football Manager 99 should excel in both aspects. They will be more user friendly, but even more detailed and realistic. In the coaching options you will have more choice than ever before, full squad training, including youth team development, totally user defined formations, accurate and meaningful statistics and much more. Then the financial options will include ground maintenance, ticket pricing, merchandising, sponsorship, concessions, etc. In this game we'll see the introduction of of 'Virtual Managers'. Here, the computer will take control of parts of the game that you do not wish to control, allowing you to concentrate on specific tasks. EA Sports have also added Bonus European Teams, which will include special reward for success. For example, if you succeed in the Premier League, you may gain offers from the Italian, German and Spanish leagues to manage one of their teams. FIFA Soccer Manager, probably had the best match presentation among the other soccer managmenet games. Still, EA Sports decided to improve quite a lot, intorducing 3D graphics running at high resulutions and high frame rates. EA Sports will use it's own Virtual Stadium Technology so that you will be able to zoom into the action on the pitch or try the top-down match view for increased speed. We rarely see a commentator in a soccer management game, but this time John Motson will take part during the matches and the player history. But probably, the most important feature will be quite an invisible one, and requires some time to see how it works. Matt Webster, on our Interview said, "One feature that is hugely important is also almost invisible. When create the results of all the other matches on a day, we actually run a 90 minute game simulation in around 300ms on a P200. This means that we get accurate data on which players have performed well as well as getting match stats for EVERY game that is played". This means that generated results won't be thrown out randomly and the best team has a greater chance of winning. We've already seen this "bug" - if you want to call it a bug - on World Cup 98, where 95% of the results are either 2-1 or 1-0 for the better team. What might make people buy it? Soccer Management games are gaining popularity year after year, especially in Europe. In a soccer management game, the gamers look for realism, lots of details and options which when modified would change your team's behaviour. The match graphics and the commentory are placed in the less important category, but they still add extra points to the game. What might it disappoint people? There will be a major competitor for FA Premier League Football Manager 99, and might get very near. This is obviosly Championship Manager 3. EA Sports have to be careful that they don't miss a single feature which CM3 might have, just like what happened last year with FIFA Soccer Manager. There is no 2 player mode, which a lot of people asked for. EA Sports said that they might include this feature in their future soccer management games. This will surely decrease some points. There will only be 5 playable leagues, and CM3 will have 16. Even though the best leagues are included, some extra ones would have made us more happy.