Review: Championship Manager 2008 - PC

by Steven Williamson on 7 November 2007, 09:20

Tags: Championship Manager 2008, Eidos (TYO:9684), PC, Mac, Sports

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The Pro Zone tool



The Pro-Zone tool is a system that is widely used in the real world of football by a number of Premiership managers, including the Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. Quite simply, it's an in-depth analysis and summary of all of the key moments from each game and a tool that gives you all the tactical analysis you’ll ever need - and more.

You can click on key moments in the game, such as free kicks, shots on goal or passes completed and you get a visual representation on the pitch, in the form of lines and arches showing you the movement of players. In addition, this is supported by tons of numerical data produced by unfathomable analysis of all of your team’s strength and weaknesses.

If you want to go even deeper into the scientific side of soccer you can choose expert mode, click on the likes of Joe Cole and view his visual representation of any moment in the game, by fast forwarding and rewinding to a specific point. The Pro-Zone tool is available to help you analyse every aspect of your team’s performance – and I mean every.

You’re able to work out exactly which part of the pitch you’ve been losing possession of the ball or see whether your winger has been making successful runs down the flanks or not. Whatever you choose to study, will give you an insight into how your team and individuals are playing and therefore you can act on your findings and amend your tactics accordingly for the next game. To give you an idea of how deep this tool is, the official word is that: Each movement of the player can be recorded and analyzed every 1/10 of a second.

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Initially, I thought that Pro-Zone was a bit of a gimmick and something that I wouldn’t use, but I’ve fiddled about with it so see whether it does work as an effective tool to help you win and I’ve been surprised by the results. When reviewing my latest match, for example, where we’d narrowly lost by one goal, I noticed that my central midfielder was hovering around the halfway line for most of the game and didn’t really push forward. So, in the next game I ordered him to push forward and to take long shots.