Footy management genre grows

"Bored with the 'all clubs in one box' football management games?" questions the press release, effectively asking if we're bored of Championship Manager, a question to which the answer is a resounding 'no'. "Just Football is set to change this," we're told, by filling the niche or luring you to the other side, whichever's the case, thanks to its officially sanctioned club-specific management series.

Rather like Codemaster's Club Football series, which focuses on the actual football rather than boardroom and training ground matters, The Official Management Series will let you manage your team and your team only, one team per published edition. At the moment you've got Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Southampton and Leeds United. Manchester United are tellingly absent, but then we've been made aware of the club's work involving other game developers (and I don't mean Rage), so this isn't a massive shock.

In fact our biggest shock was the discovery that The Official Management Series' games are due on store shelves next Friday, November 15th, having been in development for some time. If you decide to pick one up, you're promised the real times right up to date (even reflecting a few current injuries), a useful tutorial complete with commentary, the chance to work your team through daily training regimes, addressing individual players as required, and of course the chance to try out your tactics on the pitch and watch the goals tick by. Just Football is even promising a live commentary for each game from a real Premier League commentator, although we figure this might get quite old quite quickly in a management game.

Just Football have released some screenshots of the various versions, but instead of overwhelming you we've picked the Leeds United version to give you a good idea of what to expect - you can check it out here.