When we learned that the kindly Gremlin person was to pay us a visit last week, a wave of anticipation swept through the office. We'd been looking forward to the arrival of the much talked about Nigel Mansell World Championship for weeks, and since I had long since scheduled myself to review it I was delighted at the prospect of a Friday afternoon swerving round the circuits and generally being a right pain in the aerofoil.

Somebody asked if he was bringing "that football management game" as well. I replied, uninterested, "Uh, yeah... I suppose so" - and promptly returned to that small place in my mind where I had already begun tuning my Williams.

Well, Gremlin Man duly arrived and I could literally smell the fumes from that ultrapowered engine as he neared the Gamer hovel - he swore blind it wasn't his aftershave With the Mansell box nestling teasingly under his arm we exchanged greetings, and then before I knew what was happening he hit me with the bombshell "All right, shall we have a look at Premier Manager first then?"

What? Premier who? Was this some kind of joke? Now, I'm happy to look at just about any computer game - it's my job after all - but when you have a massive license thrill-'em-up such as Nigel Mansell at your disposal, a football management game starts to look a bit poxy.
There was nothing for it - Biff was penciled in for this one, so over he came to be talked through it, while I perched impatiently beside him.

Up to four players can take part, we learned, and I was invited to join in this veritable managerial feast. This was at eleven o'clock. Six hours later, long after Gremlin Man had disappeared and Biff was arranging his lift home, I was still doggedly guiding the mighty Wycombe Wanderers through the league and cups - bladder full, lunch uneaten, and Nigel Mansel discarded and untouched.

Needless to say, some hectic workload juggling and rapid arm-twisting - not to mention bribing - took place in order that I could review this masterpiece, and thus further my excuse for playing it lots more.

I understand that Mansell has now been opened and will be reviewed by someone or other in this issue, but frankly I just don't care anymore... I'm in love.

Let's just clear one thing up before we go on. If this were a review of computerised chess, and you couldn't play, it wouldn't hold too much interest for you would it? Similarly, those who loathe football are unlikely to be swayed by even my enthusiastic persuasiveness - but hey - read on... you never know.

You begin your career as the manager of a GM Vauxhall Conference League team - the choice of exactly which is yours - and the basic aim is to achieve as much success as possible from your humble beginnings, hoping eventually to become Premier League champs and maybe even win the European Cup.

Not only will you utilise all of your mighty managerial skills, but a goodly amount of business acumen is required too, in order to ensure the overall stability of the club.

Premier Manager has got so many features that I really don't know where to start, so look at the boxes littered around this page for a run-down of the game's various features. This isn't all of it by any means - I haven't even touched upon the cup competitions or injuries or... I could go on.

Most people who do follow football are likely to support a league team, and may be disappointed that they can't jump straight into the game as Liverpool or Man United. In fact the only way in which you can change club is by being offered a new position at the end of a season - obviously dependent upon how well you fared. This doesn't detract form the game in any way, and if anything only makes the whole thing more realistic - let's face it - Liverpool versus Stalybridge Celtic in the Conference league isn't really likely, is it?

If you are a fan of this kind of thing, or have been disappointed by previous attempts - indeed even if yo are an Eskimo hermit living on a glacier above a Norwegian hamlet with no access to electricity - buy this game.
Buy it, buy it, buy it. I love Premier Manager so much I want to have its babies.

Earlier on in 1992 there was a conversation in the Amiga Format office that went something like this:
"Never, no chance, no way will anyone bring out a decent football management sim."
"Er... who cares. Get on with some work."
But there are good flight and driving sims, there's even a good submarine sim, but there isn't a good footy management sim!"
"So what?"
"There are millions of people all over the country who know they can do a better job than their team's manager. So why is there no decent footy management sim yet, eh?"
I don't care and it's a deadline!"
God, you've got about as much perception as Graham Taylor, you have."
"Watch it!"

And so it went on
Then comes Premier Manager. It looks great, it doesn't crash when you get to a decent level of attainment, and it includes aspects of 'The Game' other sims of its genre pass by.

Premier Manager puts you in the shoes of the most-hated and most-loved figures in football. Defenders might blunder, strikers might fluff open goals, midfielders might play hospital passes, but only managers can pull Lineker off with 20 minutes to go to howls of derision. But managers have to start somewhere, and here you start in the GM Vauxhall Conference.

You begin with a budget of over £200.000 - a sum dreamt of by real-life GMVC clubs. This is not to be blown on the first decent libero you see on the transfer market. You have to improve the stadium's facilities and safety, plus you have to employ backroom staff, coaches, scouts and so on.

Once the 'money out' is sorted you have to turn to the 'money in'. In this case there is stadium advertising to work through. You have 48 ad placings, and making the right deals might keep you clear of your £300,000 overdraft limit.

You will probably only check on the upkeep of ads every four or so 'weeks', and once you've set up work on ground improvements, you have to wait for their completion which usually takes two months. This is an area in which you'll be in for a bit of a shock to the bank balance. Working your way from a single safety star rating to two stars costs £50,000. Moving from two to three stars leaps to an awe-inspiring £250,000.

But you're not here for the dosh. Oh no, you're here for the thrill of the game (or the jewelery if your management technique comes from the Allison/Atkinson school or the Lyall/Keegan).

There are two areas in which the game excels. Team selection and training: you don't get lumbered with players who are simply midfielders, defenders and so on. If this was the case in real football, there would be no Rijkaards, no Platinis and no Pearces - players who can play all over the pitch.

You are given players who are graded on the way they handle (what would Maradonna get?), tackle, pass and shoot. This enables you to create players who can specialise, while being able to play elsewhere - you could get attacking left-backs, keepers who (at a pinch) can hold their own in defence and so on.

You improve players by training them, or by getting your head coach to do it for you. This is where a great touch comes in, you can coach and train the players individually. You don't have to look on each of them as merely parts of a faceless section of the team. As is essential with any simulation, this adds those elements of personality to the game.

But of course, as a GMVC manager, you haven't exactly been given AC Milan's squad to muck around with. And no matter how much training, they will never be able to beat Arsenal with its squad of 'Ultimate' players. 'Ultimate' is one of the ratings given to players on the transfer market. Other ratings are Fair, Good, V Good and Workd Class.

To buy players you can use a scout (£90 a week, cheers Guv!) but this limits you to poaching players form your division and vision(s) below you. Or you can go on to the transfer market where you have to bid against other managers.

Premier league?
You will normally find Conference and 'part-time' players will go for a song - sing £25K and up when you're winning - but as soon as you leap into the Second Division (or Third, if you forget BskyB and Premier League rubbish) you find yourself staring in the teeth of £600,000 bids. A little unrealistic really when my local Div One club were able to pick up two QPR players form the Premier League for £370,000 the pair in real life. But I guess that this is all about gameplay.

So once you've chosen your team, dabbled in the transfer market and worked out the finances, it's time for a game. With PM you get to see what your opposition is like in terms of strengths and style of play. Playing styles range from the dastardly 'Long Ball' or 'Route 1' via Attacking, Defending and Passing.

You can also alter your team's formation, so balancing your formation and playing style against the opposition's can take time and thought. But then it's time for you to get on the field of play and suffer as your boys forget everything you've told them. It is here I would like to see a 'team talk' module. I would also like to see better sound than white noise (talk to the Sensibles, Gremlin!) and far better in-game graphics.

No matter how much you think that management sims are for footy-addicted trainspotters, the game is still the thing and not the number crunching. Better graphics could and with the A1200 replace 'could' with 'should') be included in a game that is supposed to simulate high-adrenaline action.

What we get are some tame vignettes of players in shirts (that you haven't chosen) where the opposition seem to be playing the same colour, tapping balls around in close up in the top tenth of the screen. This is why it falls short of a Format Gold.

One other grumble: when you think you are financially stable, you get hit for absurd fines (bringing the game into disrepute - why? Food hygiene! Faulty floodlights!) That apart, Premier Manager is an excellent addition to the pantheon of Amiga games. Nicely worked, well thought out, and playable on an A500!

Soccer management simulations seem like a strange idea don't they? If playing arcade soccer games is a sad alternative to playing the real thing, are management sims sad alternatives to playing the real thing? I mean, you don't even have to wiggle joysticks. The fact is that management games have a completely different appeal from soccer arcade games, and have more in common with god games.

The satisfaction comes from manipulating parameters in the game world and watching the results. This can be enormously satisfying, as anyone who's played Populous 2 knows. The fact that it's set in a football environment gives it a different flavour, but that's the appeal.

Premier Manager is the latest football management sim to tempt you to dip into your pocket, and let me say right now that it's a good one. Too often management games are overly complex, which although adding realism, does take away from the enjoyment rather.

While you're wading through screen after screen determining what shoelaces your team are going to wear during the match, you start to lose any interest in whether they're actually going to win or not. Premier Manager avoids this by giving you the option to tweak parameters but still making it easy to get stuck into a few games and make a few changes along on the way.

You start the game as manager of a Conference club and you have to get yourself into the position of manager in the premier league. This could be taking your team up the divisions, but it's more likely that you'll be offered jobs on other teams if you impress with your ability as a manager.

You can play with up to four players at once, which is a nice idea in theory but I can't see it being the most rivetting of multi-player games. Nah, put the kettle on, load it up and kiss your social life goodbye - it's the only way with a game like this.

After entering your name and choosing a conference club to manage (from such glamorous luminaries as Welling United or Stalybridge Celtic), you're taken to the main screen. There you'll find 12 icons which you click on to get into various parts of the game and tweak things.

The first icon takes you into the ground improvements and sponsors screen, where you decide how much to spend on your pitch and stands, and what sponsors you want for the boards around the ground (you can even be sponsored by AMIGA POWER).

Other screens enable you to transfer players and buy up talent from other teams, look at the league tables, rearrange your squad, work on your finances, look at future fixtures (in all leagues) and - wait for it - play a match.

You decide what formation your team will be playing in and what kind of playing style they'll be adopting, and then you get going. The match is played out for you in a small box in the corner of the screen, with indications of who has the ball and where it is on the field. The play is watchable and definitely adds something, but you can speed it all up if you just want to get straight to the results.

You get results from all divisions, so you can check on other teams' progress. It all gets very exciting, especially when your team starts winning.

There are plenty of management games out there, ranging from the tedious to the compulsive, and this one definitely falls into the latter category. It's not as complex as Graham Taylor's Soccer Challenge, but it doesn't suffer for that and certainly succeeds in giving a very enjoyable, and somewhat addictive, gaming experience. If you fancy yourself as a it of Kenny Dalglish, this game's for you.