1st Division Manager combines several elements of soccer: team management, on-field play and strategy. As the manager, you set training schedules for your team's players, manage funding, acquire or trade players to strengthen your roster and pick starting line-ups for each game. Your goal is to take your team to the championship while tracking fan approval as well as finances.

Before each game, you select one of 80 teams to manage from four English soccer leagues. The four leagues, Premiere, 1st Division, 2nd Division and 3rd Division, each have a total of 20 teams from which to choose. You then manage your players by deciding what skill you want them trained in: handling, tackling, passing or shooting. The players you have on each roster are composed of goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and attackers.

If you're unhappy with your roster, you can acquire new players via trades with other teams. In each case, you have a budget, or beginning pool of funding, that must not only be used for trades but to pay player salaries and team upkeep. On the chance you deplete your monetary fund, you can take out a loan from the bank but must pay it back along with weekly interest until the loan is completely satisfied.

When you're ready to lead your team into a match, you have to set your team's line-up and formation. There are four attacker, midfielder and defender slots and one goalkeeper slot; eleven of the slots must be filled or your team will suffer a big disadvantage during gameplay. During the halftime break, you can substitute fresh players for those who may have reached tired status.

Other features of 1st Division Manager include screens for updating records, loading or saving games and displaying schedules and game results in the area of team management. Under the player training screen, information regarding player names, positions, injuries and training achieved is available. Team management also includes the option to choose from seven different jersey colors and data is available on a team by team basis for tracking league position, cash in the bank, manager, FA Cups won, season number and a percentile rating. ~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide