Remember the excitement generated by The Sims? A game was coming out where you could control your character's life and do almost anything you wanted with them. Of course you could, and sometimes tried to, raise your character's to have normal lives, marry, have kids, get a good job and all that. But surely more frequently were the hilarious games of ruining people's lives. Taking the stairs out of the swimming pool so the idiot's would drown. Locking them in a room with just a firework, waiting for the inevitable. Trapping their baby in a fence they couldn't get through. Making them drink coffee the entire time so they were surviving, but in constant misery and always wetting themselves.

Yes, it was fun to be ruinous or subversive in that game. But it's not something that has all too widely crossed over to Football Manager. It is the perfect platform to do such a thing - you have carte blanche to manage your team in any way you want (until the board have lost their patience with you), so of course you can manage them like a total bastard. But most games are straight down the middle, trying to build your team into a behemoth and leading them to glory all the while. And that's fair enough. That's essentially the aim of the game. But as the football season in Europe ends and the inevitable football manager fatigue and demotivation start to set in, these games become less appealing.

So I'm making the case for an altogether different kind of game, to keep Football Manager Fresh and fun. The bastard game.

Meet Barcelonga. Barcelonga look much like Barcelona in most ways. They're prestigious, have some great players, wear the same kit, have the same badge and play at the same stadium, and even, technically are the very same team. But Barcelonga are different. They are Barcelona after the revolution. You see, my first act as Barcelona manager was to lay down the law and teach Johnny Foreigner a thing or two about British steel and hard graft. Barcelona may be a wonderful and successful side, but imagine what they could be with some of the Stoke directness about them. A long throw into the box could cut out about 10 of Xavi's unnecessary passes. So Messi and Iniesta, those fancy Dans with their individualistic "classy" styles of play, were shifted off to Man City. Valdes' kicking is only 12? Not good enough - he goes, Paul Robinson, that fine purveyor of kicking comes in. It was tempting to keep Xavi on and see if he could adapt to our new "hit and hope" style, but once Karl Henry was in, he wasn't needed. Karl Henry, Sergio Busquets, Javier Mascherano and Seydou Keita are all far more accomplished leg breakers than him, so he went.

Barcelonga were born with several transfers out and even more in. Ok, Andy Barcham and James Coppinger as backup wingers to Pedro and Affelay might be a step too far, but this is my game. Similarly, if Villa, Jan Koller or Mamady Sidibe aren't available up front, I'm sure Adebayo Akinfenwa can do a job.

The point of Barcelonga for me is to have fun whilst doing something subversive and different to anything I've ever done on FM. The point isn't to ruin them and try to lose, but rather to intentionally weaken them and play a radically different style to the norm. Something about Barcelona playing with 6 defensive mentality players and 2 target men amused me.

But games like this don't have to stop with Barcelonga. Tired of FM? The problem might be solved, not by taking over a team that will definitely win everything, or a team that will be a ridiculous challenge, but just by doing something you find funny. Use the editor to put Accrington in the premiership with their current squad, sell off 10 players from Madrid and build from there. Whatever takes your fancy, FM is a more powerful, more worldwide, flexible game than we often let ourselves believe. Try something different. You never know, you might have fun. And Adebayo Akinfenwa might get a goal in La Liga, if Robert Huth lumps it up just right!


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