Well would you? On reflection it seems a silly question, we all love football or we wouldn’t be looking at football website and who wouldn’t on the face of it like to get very well paid for training and managing a bunch of footballers.

Sounds simple doesn’t it ? But look at the other side of the coin, the worse employment stability in the UK with managers on 5 year contracts often sacked without compunction by a success hungry chairman/owner. The pressure of having thousands of people baying for you to be sacked with the media thrusting a microphone into your face asking for your personal thoughts after a bad day at the office.

So again the question, who would be a manager? Many of us whilst balking at the real thing proffer opinions in the pubs, at work or on the net as to who should play centre half, whether we should play 4-4-2 and so on and so forth. Some of us indulge our football fantasies further on the internet, whether it be the simple fantasy football or the more complex interactive games such as Football Manager (FM12)the latest edition of which is out tomorrow.

With this in mind I have decided to see if I can better Roberto Martinez over the course of the season using the aforementioned FM12 .

This is intended to be a light hearted comparison as all the stresses and strains that Martinez endures week in week out will not be suffered by your truly in pursuit of Premier League glory.

The ground rules are;

1/ I will not sign or sell any players that Wigan don’t, thus ensuring we have the same squad.

2/ I will not use any players attributed to Wigan on the database prior to their actual signing date so for example I won’t play Maloney until after the first of September.

3/ I will exclude any Wigan players out on loan in reality even if the database shows them still being with Wigan e.g. McManaman.

I will blog my progress comparing it to Martinez’s on an approximately monthly basis although with August, September and October being outstanding the initial blogs may be more frequent assuming that Mr Whelan doesn’t sack me by then

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