But, for the first time in its short lifetime, I am genuinely considering opting against Football Manager. Actually, that’s a barefaced lie – i fully intend to buy FM2010, but this year I’m also going to buy its big rival, Championship Manager.

Not because I think it will have improved to a level at which it genuinely competes with Sports Interactive’s record-smashing masterpiece – although early reports suggest it’s giving it a hell of a go – but because Eidos is doing something a bit different with the CM2010 launch.

You see, not only is CM2010 being released more than a month earlier in an attempt to snag managers’ attentions sufficiently to prevent them feeding their Football Manager habit, but the makers are also letting you pay pretty much whatever you like. Yes, Eidos is doing a Radiohead.

Technically, the minimum is £2.51, as you have to pay at least a penny and there’s a £2.50 transaction fee, but it’s a move that will surely tempt FM fans curious as to how the lesser rival is faring up. The hope is that enough of them will be surprised by what they find, and may not make the move back across when FM2010 hits the shops in October.

But will this actually work on gamers? And, in an industry being pummelled to pieces by software piracy, how many will choose to pay anything more than the bare minimum?

I’m not entirely convinced by Radiohead’s claims that most people paid decent money for their In Rainbows album, but I’m even less convinced when the question is shifted to games. This is a game which will retail at around £24.99 in stores and, even though this offer only applies to pre-orders of the download version before the September 11th launch, that’s a huge difference from the £8 or £9 most new albums sell for.

I could see myself feasibly being generous and paying a fiver for an album on this type of offer, but there’s not a chance in Hell that I’d voluntarily stump up anything close to £25 for a game if I didn’t have to.

I know this is purely a publicity stunt, and it’s one that Eidos really needs to work if it’s going to break Sports Interactive’s stranglehold on the football management genre, but does an ‘honesty box’ sales model have any long-term merit in the games market? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Two jump out above the rest. In football, then-Spurs striker Darren Bent grew frustrated during protracted negotiations over his move to Sunderland and vented a series of irate tweets in the direction of club chairman Daniel Levy – not a great idea with the transfer still very much in the balance.

“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around levy”

Spelling and punctuation issues aside, the papers jumped at the chance to write a story that contained both controversy and that newfangled web thing the kids are all talking about, so Twitter became the tool that earned Bent the move he wanted.

And in his first press conference as a Sunderland player Bent was quick to admit it played a part. ”In the long run it seems like it has [helped] but at the same time I was disappointed at the way it came out. Normally we tend to keep our mouths shut and everybody does the talking around us.”

Cricketing twits

This last comment takes us neatly onto the next big Twitter controversy of the summer, and a lesson in how not to use Twitter from the Australian cricket team.

Hours before the third Ashes test at Edgbaston, opening batsman Phillip Hughes tweeted, ”Disappointed not to be on the field with the lads today,” to his 3,000 followers. This vital team information hadn’t yet been announced, so it was quickly picked up by the sporting press, who had a field day with it.

Except Hughes didn’t really send the tweet. In fact Phillip Hughes’ Twitter feed may as well not be under his name at all, as his agent went on to (try to) explain: “We get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy,” went the baffling explanation, suggesting an organised and impersonal PR regime that goes against the whole point of Twitter.

Twitter works best when people embrace it fully. I have to admit I haven’t yet done so, I’m more of a watcher than a tweeter, but I find it fascinating to see the sporting names who clearly love the way Twitter lets them talk directly to the fans – and no sport better illustrates its potential than golf.

Birdie tweets

After prolific-tweeter Ian Poulter’s horrendous first round at the recent British Open, he was brutally honest: ”sorry folks played absolutely shocking today never hit 1 shot that i was happy with, very strange. good job 2morrow is another day.”

Another day and another shocker – he finished tied for 147th place and missed the cut: ”played horribly for 2 days. i couldnt hit a cows arse with a banjo.”

Contrast that with American Stewart Cink, who plugged away for four days to take a shock victory, his first ever golfing Major. He was straight on Twitter after the award ceremony: “Not sure what to say yet but this picture should do the trick…http://yfrog.com/7buoej”

He followed that up over the next few days with a string of Claret Jug-related photos involving private jets, Guinness and even a 13.5lb lobster, before letting his followers in on the backstage secrets of David Letterman (chatting about Twitter with Kevin Spacey, of all people).

It’s the kind of intimacy that Twitter was made for, and the sheer number of golfers utterly addicted to tweeting means you’re often treated to snippets of conversation between them – Cink now knows Paul Casey has Wimbledon final tickets, so I know it too. You get to be a part of the sport’s camaraderie.

Most Twitter users don’t actually tweet much but everybody follows, and this is precisely why the many-following-few formula of Twitter will keep on growing as interesting people keep on tweeting. Yes, Darren Bent’s tweets may have been ill-advised, but unlike that of Phillip Hughes they’re exactly what makes Twitter so engrossing.

But it’s how I’m doing it that I love most:

It’s as close to real-time as I’ve ever seen such a score tracker – it’s currently three entire service games ahead of the BBC’s live text, and (by checking the current live odds – always a dead giveaway to the score) I can see that it’s no more than 10-15 seconds behind reality.

And tennis isn’t the only sport in which you can keep track of progress in close to real-time. Tim’s already blogged about the wonderfully comprehensive Olympic coverage on the BBC website, and while it’s rare to find live video online, score trackers are increasingly common and more high-tech than ever.

Sports with numbers fare best online. Golf gets the live score treatment on the European Tour website (above), and the USPGA too – current holes, scores and positions are all updated as and when things occur all over the course.

And although Sky Sports’ Score Center won’t give you the delight that is five solid hours of the great Jeff Stelling on a Saturday afternoon, it will give you all the football scores, all the goals and all the stats in one constantly updating package.

In fact, pretty much any major sporting event can now be followed live, without access to a TV or radio, and that’s something that I find hugely liberating.

And also hugely distracting. Murray just lost the second set 6-1, which is my signal to get back to that Labs…

The Premiership was the case in point, but the Cup Final gave me my ammunition: the BBC/Sky choice was just that – a choice, as both were doing their best to win over viewers to the same spectacle simultaneously.

Since Sky’s rights over the Premiership were broken up and Setanta “won” one of the packages of games, we don’t have any more choice than we did previously. I can’t choose whether to enjoy a match on Sky or switch to its rival, as they never show the same games. Instead I have to subscribe to both packages – at considerable cost – or miss out on some games completely.

Far from increasing the choice to consumers it’s just: a) made things more awkward; b) made things more expensive; and c) forced us to turn to an inferior product for some games. Have you seen the quality of Setanta’s coverage?

There’s no direct parallel in the world of IT, as most software doesn’t involve subscriptions, but you can draw a comparison with the Microsoft antitrust cases. Forced to remove certain bundled applications from Windows, we were assured that people would then have greater choice, and we’d flock to those superior alternatives in our droves… what’s that? You quite like having everything on a plate? Oh.

If Google’s rise continues and we all end up organising our lives online, with calendars, email, office apps and more, all in one place, is that really such a terrible prospect? I have difficulty keeping track of even a small handful of the logins I use online, if someone told me I had to split that up even more and made out it was in my own interests I’d probably cry.

The simple fact is that, regardless of what the few may argue, in a lot of cases Joe Public likes a monopoly. It gives everything in one place, from one source and (PC Pro readers aside, before the emails start piling in) that suits the needs of the majority of people. When that product is also undoubtedly the best – as in Sky’s case – I’ll take the monopoly over the alternative any day.