14 DAY TRIAL // I make a lot of mistakes in Football Manager 2014 because I really want to try things out and see how my players perform using a variety of tactics and roles.
In the Sports Interactive game, like in the real world of the sport, consistency is important and once a team finds a winning formula, it needs to stick to it most of the time, only tweaking the parameters when it faces strong opposition or changes in personnel.
So my first few careers with Liverpool tend to end with me being fired because I have failed to find a good tactical setup for the game and I was only in eight place at Christmas, which the board of the club find underwhelming.
But now I am in a game that I fully intend to see through and I am torn between staying in charge and restarting.
It all started well with a few wins in friendlies and 9 points from my first three Premier League matches.
Then Daniel Agger limped off during a League Cup match and my assistant informed me that he would be out for six months.
I then lost captain Steven Gerrard for six weeks and Luis Suarez, my biggest offensive threat, got banned for 3 matches after being sent off.
I am now in March 2014 and I sit in fifth, 9 points adrift from Chelsea in fourth place, and I do not know whether to keep playing this campaign or give up and start again.
The fact that I could implement a very different set of tactics for Liverpool shows how varied the situations and the mechanics in Football Manager 2014 are, offering a player the chance to take any club to the top as long as he chooses the right path.
But constantly replaying the same season seems like a waste of my rather limited gaming time.