Championship Manager 17 - Initial impressions from the touchline

Football's back!

With the Premier League season returning this weekend, so does football fever. Ahhhh, kids in the park, jumpers for goalposts, and rude chants on the terraces. Wonderful, isn't it? It's not just real life football that's returning, either...

Like a good RKO, Championship Manager 17 dropped outta nowhere today. While we haven't played enough just yet to give our final thoughts in a review - which will be coming next week - we thought we'd jot down the notes from our tactics board just for you.

My very first thoughts, after picking my beloved Bristol City, were how wrong the player ratings are.

Of course, football is a game of opinions, but I challenge you to find any single City fan who thinks Mark Little is 12 points better (12!) than Luke Ayling. Some players are wildly overrated and others wildly underrated - with almost none of them correct.

Once I'd recovered from my eyes popping out my head at the sight of my players' ratings, my gaze turned to the game's appearance. While the tactics board is quite cleanly presented and the menus are laid out intuitively, the rest of the aesthetic is pretty horrid.

Everything from the colours to the fonts to the lack of any team or competition licences screams 'cheap' - and that's a recurring theme throughout the game.

Part of the reason it looks cheap is because it is cheap - free, in fact. But it does, unfortunately, show.

We've got three different currencies to deal with, one of which can be bought for in game cash (and like an Arsenal season ticket, it ain't cheap).

These currencies can be spent on coaches, training, stadium upgrades, and more.

The store isn't shoved in your face too much at least - but I just might have to forgo a pie at my next match if I want to play continue playing ChampMan this year.