Football Manager 27 had a lot to prove. After last year's disappointment, Sports Interactive needed more than a few tweaks to win back its players. Fortunately, it has given us something far more ambitious: a game that doesn't just get the series back on track, but makes a convincing case for being its best entry yet.

Greater depth brings greater difficulty, but also a heightened sense of accomplishment when you finally reach your goals, big and small. Each win feels earned; each wonderkid you identify and sign gives a rush of excitement, and etching your name into the history books as a club legend is a truly brag-worthy achievement. Outside of some teething issues with the Unity match engine, which is only in its second year, the game could be bordering on perfection.

On top of these gameplay improvements comes a refinement of the much-maligned UI, which isn’t quite as close to perfection, but is a big step in the right direction and could reach its full potential by next year's game.

It’s an ongoing sports cliché that athletes learn more from their losses than their wins, and that is also true for Sports Interactive and Football Manager. There’s no hiding from the disaster that was FM 26, but, fairly, Sports Interactive didn’t try to hide it; it faced the criticism head-on and promised to fix things in the future.

This left FM 26 fairly unsupported in its post-launch life. Between December and March, it released very few meaningful updates, and it left World Cup mode until the last minute, missing out on all the hype of the event itself.

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