So this is the first of a series of competitions to win your very own copy of the game saving you several pounds buying it yourself.  The beauty of this competition is it’s really easy to enter.  All you have to do is tell us why you love the Football Manager series? Using the comment box below. Best answer wins of a copy of the game…. Simple as you like.

Entries for this competition close at midnight (GMT) of the 03/11/10.

So come on, tell us why you love the Football Manager series?

To celebrate the launch of the game, SI have teamed up with talkSPORT to give fans the chance to play a whole season for free.

What’s more, those that can guide their team into the Top 25 come the end of the season will be rewarded with a 12 month free subscription!

Do you think you could cope with the egos of the likes of Ronaldo, Messi or Kaka, wheel and deal in the transfer market, and make the big decisions that could be the difference between glory or defeat for your club?

To enter the competition and find out more details, go to:

http://new.talksport.net/competitions/compdetails.asp?comp_ID=100389

Once again it’s a simple comment to win competition which gives everybody who isn’t as gifted with words as good a chance as somebody who is to win.  Although I want this one to provide worthwhile information to the thousands of daily visitors to thefootymanager.com so it will take just a little thought.

So what do I do

All you have to do to have a chance of winning is tell us who you think the most underrated players in Football Manager 2009 are in the comment box at the bottom of the page. The more information the better because it helps people looking for potential bargain buys although if you just want to drop a name in then that works just as well.

What can I win?

Well the lovely people at Sports Interactive (SI) have provided us with 3 packs of Limited Edition Football Manager Top Trumps so that is one pack for three lucky people.

I’m not a user of Top Trumps myself but I have flicked through a pack of them and they look very cool and I have looked on Google and can’t see where you can buy them so they do indeed look very limited.

When Can I enter?

Now, get posting in the comments below and I look forward to seeing what you guys have to say.

Participants can post comments until the 17th of January 2009. The comments will be closed on the 18th of January at 00:01 GMT.

How can I participate?

Well that is the easy part.  All you have to do is comment in this article what you are looking forward to most in Football Manager 2009.  It can be three words, a sentance, a paragraph it’s totally up to you. We’ll then randomly pick the winners from the comments in this thread and notify you by email if you are one of the three lucky winners!

Please notice that:

• participants can post comments until the 13th of November 2009. The comments will be closed on the 14th of November at 00:01 GMT.
• the winners will be determined by a random generator;
• make sure that you fill your e-mail in the comment field correctly, so we can contact you afterwards.

What can I Win?

Football Manager 2009′s match engine has seen more testing than ever before having been extensively beta tested in Football Manager Live for the past year.

The famous Football Manager match engine can now be viewed in full 3D with motion captured animations for the players. Sports Interactive has been working on the 3D match engine for nearly 3 years with the support of SEGA Japan’s Virtua Striker team who provided the motion capture data and some of the animations. You can now watch your matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and re-watch any part of the match by fast forwarding and rewinding the action using a new match time bar that flags the key moments in the game. The old 2D view of the match engine is still there, especially for those people whose computers aren’t powerful enough to take advantage of the 3D views.

As a result of usability testing on Football Manager 2008, this year sees widescreen support for the game for the first time, as well as lots of tweaks to the user interface for easier navigation.

Football Manager 2009 is fully updated for the new 2008/09 football season with all the latest league, club and player data, featuring over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and around 350,000 players and staff from around the world, drawn fresh from the famous Sports Interactive database.

Sports Interactive have worked hard to reflect the greater impact the media has been having in recent years on the world of football, in the in-game dealings with the press. The game now features more news stories, more detail and greater media interaction than ever before, creating an even more realistic simulation of the football world.

When Will I Get My Prize?

Well the game is being released on the 14th November so we’ll select the winners and get the prizes sent out on that day.  You should get the game through your letterbox on the 15th (the day after release) just in time for the weekend of FM09 abuse.

So spread the word of the competition to your friends, other websites and most importantly comment yourself to be in with a shout of winning.

The competition has now closed folks so the winners will be hearing from us in the next 24 hours!

Good luck, thefootymanager.com Team!

UPDATE – Congratulations to Paul Murrey, Carl Lightfoot and Frank Keegan our competition winners.  Look out for more competitions in the near future.