Life has a habit of being unfair. As your reviewer writes this, Birmingham City have just gone 2-0 down in a vital relegation game, adding more misery to a run that's seen them take four points out of a possible 21. A couple of key players want away. One has already sorted a Bosman out. The board aren't happy. The fans aren't impressed. And you can keep those comments about life imitating art to yourself, thank you very much.

The cause of this current misery is, of course, Football Manager 2006, the latest iteration in a franchise of immensely deep management games, where you attempt to build up a career for yourself in the beautiful game.

As before, one of the beauties of the game is the breadth of the challenge. Do you start with a small club and work your way up? A bankrupt mid-table team looking to survive on loan signings? Or maybe go straight in at the top and issue lots of press statements about Jose Mourinho? The choice is yours, and you can manage a team from the thousands included in the game, spread right across the globe.

Much of the 2006 edition will be familiar to those who played the 2005 game, as the foundations remain unchanged. You have as much control as you wish to take over the running of your team, with each player and member of staff at your club - right down to youth level - coming with a wealth of statistics and information for you to peruse. You then need to bring people in, ship out the ones you don't want and generally create a club that will start going places. And don't forget the likes of tactics and training, over which you have as much or as little control as you want.

That all this hangs together quite so well is a testament to the extraordinarily strong interface that glues the game together. Given the depth of what's on offer, it's amazing that you never feel stuck, lost or overwhelmed, and clearly much work has gone into making the game as seamless to play as possible. In fact, it's more straightforward than ever this time, thanks to the option to use visual bars rather than sheet after sheet of numbers and statistics.

Yet while it may be seamless, it's certainly not easy, and succeeding at Football Manager 2006 requires a fair amount of thought and effort. Fortunately, some of the new features this time round work in your favour.

Half-time team talks, for instance, work surprisingly well, as it becomes possible to inspire individual players or the team as a whole to a sprightlier second-half display. Meanwhile, the evolved media section allows you to publicise your thoughts on individuals, whether they work for your club or not. It's great stuff.

Probably our favourite segments, though, are the transfer market and the match day itself. The depth of the former is astonishing, and you'll need to employ a team of good scouts to really get to grips with it. You can lose hours of your life hunting down the next bright new talent, or finding the experienced player who will plug that hole in your team. It's frightening just how immersive this section is.

But come match day, whether you opt for the strong 2D visual representation of the game or the old-fashioned text commentary, you find yourself desperately caring about what happens. To the point of being told to shut up by anyone in the vicinity as you celebrate a crucial goal.

Football Manager 2006 ultimately finds a team of developers at the very top of their game. There haven't been huge leaps forward from twelve months ago, nor is there a killer new feature that makes a huge and fundamental difference. But this is still a strong and welcome evolution of the very best football management game on the planet. And chances are you'll still be playing it when the 2007 edition comes out.

The best got better. This is the world's finest football management simulation, bar none.