The introduction of the sport’s new transfer ruling, whereby from August 31st most player transfers must be completed and any further transfers are frozen until the New Year, means that LMA Manager 2003’s development team can implement the information and produce the final game with the full squads in place.

Codemasters is committed to ensuring that LMA Manager 2003 has the complete and correct information for each of 17000-plus professional players from the 720 European football clubs featured in the game. To pull all those stats together, a team of hundreds of statisticians and researchers across Europe compile the hard data that is incorporated into the game.

"The new transfer ruling is a real bonus, enabling LMA Manager 2003 to feature the correct teams, unaffected by last minute transfers in our final stages of the game’s production," explains Simon Prytherch, producer of the LMA series and head of one of Codemasters’ internal development studios.

"It’s all part of ensuring that PlayStation 2 and Xbox gamers will have a game that really captures all the emotion, excitement and atmosphere of managing a real football club."

The LMA Manager series continues to dominate the genre on console. Leagues ahead of any PC conversion, LMA Manager is the only game of its type created specifically for use on consoles. With its easy-to-use control interface created with joypads, not keyboards, in mind LMA Manager 2003 makes 4-4-2 as easy as 1-2-3, and with numerous managerial responsibilities it also offers unrivalled depth of gameplay.