If you stumbled upon this page by chance and glanced at the screenshots, you could be forgiven for thinking the latest franchise to be ported to the 360 was Microsoft Excel. Certainly, the Football Manager series is not the prettiest in existence - the title of "the beautiful game" that the franchise is based on could not really be applied to the franchise itself - but much like the sport of football itself, its simple exterior belies a deep and complex core, and the series has won a dedicated and hardcore following on the PC through its extreme depth, addictiveness, and faithfulness to the world of football.

When I say the world of football, I really mean the world. 117 leagues from 50 countries are accurately represented, and you can manage any team from any one of these leagues. There are also the national teams in all the real life international competitions, all available for you to take control of. A huge army of volunteers, made up of hardcore fans of the series from around the world, work each year to update the FM database of teams, players and staff for their respective countries' local leagues and keep it as accurate as possible. Football Manager's database is so enormous that it feels like you're browsing the IMDB of football. If you think you can better Guus Hiddink by guiding Australia to victory over Brazil in the World Cup, you can try. If you want to guide Liverpool to European glory, or try and raise Worksop Town from Conference North relegation battlers to Premier League champions, you can do so. Each of these delivers an entirely different experience to the player, so replayability is very high.

It should be noted that you do play as the manager himself, not the team. Whilst this sounds like a silly thing to say for a management sim, Football Manager almost approaches the realm of a role-playing game. Apparently, that was in fact the original aim of Sports Interactive when they started developing their Championship Manager series way back in 1992. (a series that is now continued by Eidos, with SI continuing their games under the new banner of Football Manager). What this means in in-game terms is that you as a manager are independent of the team you are managing and are free to resign, switch clubs, be sacked, create relationships with other managers, be interviewed by the paper, and so on. So instead of taking Worksop Town to the top, you can use them as a springboard to launch your managerial career until you work your way up to Real Madrid or the Brazilian national team. All the while the game is tracking your progress and recording statistics, even assigning you RPG-style stats based on your playstyle, such as your loyalty, media handling skills, preferred formation, and so on.

The depth allows you to play the game you want to play it, both on and off the field. Depending on how you like to play, you might want to transfer in a whole heap of players to fit your pre-conceived game plan, or you could find the best game plan to suit your current players - a much smarter option for the smaller clubs without extravagant transfer budgets. Alternatively, you might plan for the long term and train up a team of youngsters, sacrificing immediate success for long-term triumph. Just be careful you don't do too poorly in the short term, or your chairman and fans might grow fed up and sack you, before you get to see the fruits of your labour.

The length of the game is limitless. You must start in the 2005-06 season, but you can continue your career as long as you like, so it's worth planning for the long term. You might regret switching to a bigger club when years later in the 2047-48 season, your new club is languishing in the relegation zone as the club you abandoned is soaring high, with the very players you signed for them all those seasons ago!

If all this sounds a bit daunting, that's because it is. Football Manager mercilessly throws you in at the deep end of the pool, but thankfully for new players, in this latest game of the series Sports Interactive has at least included inflatable armbands. (Hey, that was my first attempt at a game journalism metaphor, go easy on me). All of the game's many screens now have a help page that can be accessed through the start menu, helping you work out what each option does and how it can be used to your advantage. While basic football terms are also explained, the more detailed aspects of the sport are not. The help system will happily explain how to filter your in-game mail messages to only include transfer updates, or what a playmaker is, or how to set the pace of your team's play, but no attempt is made to explain which pace is more useful in which situation, or whether or not setting a quicker pace would be a good idea with your current squad. The advantage of a 4-3-3 over a 4-4-2 is not discussed, nor is the significance of the holding midfielder. To put it bluntly: if you are still unsure what the offside rule is, this isn't the game for you.

If you do have an understanding and appreciation of the world game however, you will find that no video game represents the matches themselves better than FM's match engine. A full 90 minutes is played out behind the scenes (don't worry - it takes just a second or two to calculate) for each and every match, even the ones you don't control. If you want to watch the whole 90 minutes of your team's match as you manage them you can, but for most people the highlights will be enough - you can choose to watch either extended highlights, just the key moments of the match, or just the goals - in real-time, as you adjust positions, make substitutions, tweak player mentalities, and so on.

Match day is the only time whilst playing FM that anything on your TV screen will move. Typically of the game however, the engine favours accuracy and realism over fancy pants graphics. The matches are represented through a top-down two dimensional pitch, with players represented by large circles and the ball represented by a smaller circle. It sounds dull, but if you have any sort of imagination the realism of the ball play ensures you can easily forget you are watching a couple of mathematical algorithms and can start to swear at the ref for awarding a free kick against you, hold your breath as Thierry Henry breaks through your offside trap, or jump up off the sofa with your fists pumping the air as the young debutant you brought on in the 87th minute scores the equaliser in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Your loved ones will be disturbed by this display, but such is the nature of Football Manager - nobody can work out what all the fuss is about until they've played it. Once they have, you might not see them for weeks.

So that's the game of Football Manager. But how well does it translate to the 360, and how does the latest version compare to the franchise as a whole? The answer to both questions is fairly positive. The core of the game itself is completely untouched, with only a few of the frilly edges snipped off for the 360 release. The most immediately noticeable thing when played on a standard TV is the much lower resolution than that of a PC monitor. This means less of those glorious stats can fit on the screen at one time, and consequently, much more switching back and forth between pages. These problems are eliminated on a HDTV however as you get the full resolution needed. While SI have done a decent enough job of porting the Windows-style interface to the Xbox, with each button on the controller serving a specific navigation function, I think the interface itself needs a total overhaul to be suited to a console. There's a reason Microsoft didn't just port the Windows Start menu to the Xbox dashboard, and that's because those sort of menus are not fun to navigate with an over-sensitive joystick. SI needs to design a console-specific interface in order to make the console version less of a chore to navigate back and forth. You soon get used to it though and will be zipping back and forth between spreadsheets in no time, with only the occasional inconsistency in the controls causing a bit of frustration.

If achievements are your thing, Football Manager 2006 has plenty. 30, to be exact. Just don't expect to get any easy gamerscore points out of it. Achievements range from signing your first player, which is worth a single point, to going an entire season without losing, which for such a massive effort, will only net you a stingy 150 points.

The online mode of the PC has thankfully not been dropped for the 360 version, and the game allows you to play in organised seasons, cups, or friendlies against your fellow managers. Unfortunately your humble reviewer did not get a chance to test the online modes, as players are scarce - especially during Australian peak hours.

For the PC gamers among us who own previous versions of Football Manager, the two main additions to the 2006 vintage are an overhaul of the coaching system, and a new 'team talk' feature. The coaching system has been revamped to make things easier for the manager, quickly allowing you to change training intensity and specify individual training routines for your players. The overview screen of your coaching staff also allows you to see which areas your coaches are strong or weak at, allowing you to hire and fire until you achieve the balance you want.

Team talks allow you to speak to your players at half time to let them know your opinion of how the match is progressing. You choose from a list of six options, ranging from angry to ecstatic to cautionary, and this can affect the performance of your players in the second half. It seems to me though that these have a little too much bearing on the match, with the text commentary often referring to a player who has been lifted thanks to a remark at half-time, or who's not playing to their usual standard. It seems unfair that a carefully planned and orchestrated game plan can go awry because you chose the wrong answer in a half-time quiz. There is an option to keep your mouth shut and just hand them their oranges though, so if it becomes too much of a problem you needn't worry about it.