But if you play these games, you believe. Examining his history and performances, you might wonder if Swansea defender Richard Bound could make the grade in the Second Division. Short of cash, you pore over pages and pages of obscure East European players in search of an undiscovered gem. And if you do take a Third Division minnow to the lofty heights of mid-table obscurity in the First Division, it means something. It really does.

Football management games are almost entirely the sole preserve of males. Girls just don't get it. I once had a girlfriend who popped round one day while I was playing CM2. She asked what it was, and I gave a brief explanation while saving my game. "Oh," she said. And that, bar a guarded expression for a moment or so, was it. She didn't even have the good grace to call me a sad bastard. In her eyes, it was almost beneath that.

In many ways, she was right. Ask any regular CM3 player if their daydreams and loose thoughts are infected by the game and an honest response will be surprising. Countless thousands of blokes across the country pass time on the toilet by musing about their management game squad. Get two such devotees together and they'll gleefully relate their Champions League triumphs. A friend of mine once coped with the abrupt ending of a long-term relationship by playing Championship Manager solidly for four or five days. He didn't answer the phone or door, and only emerged having guided Stoke to European Championship success. So that was alright, then.

The minds that once pondered over whether Megatron could beat Optimus Prime in a Transformers scrap move on, but a portion move sideways. Swathed with the veneer of adult respectability, the part of you that emphatically decided that the Red Spiderzoid could 'have' any Blue Zoid simply latches onto another meaningless pursuit. Football management games, in all their abstract, low-tech, text-based glory, are just another self-indulgent, escapist fixation.