46-0. A disaster, a shame, a disgrace! Defeats with such a big difference of goals do not happen in the professional football, but in Football Manager 2008, in addition with 8.0.2 patch installed, they do come up. This is what happened to one keen FM player, Patryk, when he was managing Chelsea. Moreover the rivals of The Blues were managed by another human manager, a friend of our jinxed hero, with whom Patryk was playing together on the same computer.

Everything started from picking the squads for the Community Shield match. The first one to do it was the manager of Manchester United, who clicked “Continue” after he had finished selection. Then, the change of players happened and the control over mouse was taken by Chelsea’s coach, who somehow was already… in the match window. What happened then? Let’s allow the witness to tell us what was going on:

It was possible to open tactics and team talk, but (because of lack of the squad) making any substitutions was impossible. I was trying to go back to “tactics”, where all options, including choosing players, were available. However, the changes did not give any results. Everything looked as if the match had started (but without the players). Surprised by this situation, I went on holiday – the last hope was that the squad in some magical way would be chosen by my assistant. Unfortunately, it did not happen. After the match, I decided to save the game (I have the save from right after the match) and to save the match itself.

If you are interested in watching a game, in which only eleven players are involved, you should just click here. It is really worth seeing, because this case does not end with the bug making it unable to select the squad – what happens during the match itself is also quiet interesting. It turns out that the game does not react for the situation – Manchester players are playing as if the whole of Chelsea team was running among them. The Red Devils are creating actions on the wings, crossing, and shooting from distance. What is it all for if the goal is empty? But wait a minute – there is no goalkeeper, so who is kicking the goal kicks? Ghost-footballers! They start from the middle of the pitch after every lost goal as well and ghost-defenders kick the ball away onto corners, and sometimes even win headers against players of “Red Devils”. Additionally to that, our ghosts are seen not only by the opponents, but also by the referee, who saw only three offsides of Manchester’s players within the whole match! Of course, if there had not been any players from London, every single pass on Chelsea’s half would have ended with an offside. What is going on then? There is no team on the pitch but somebody is kicking the ball. The Blues even had 46% of ball possession and dominated the middle of the pitch (!). But the presence of invisible players does not rescue the team from a big defeat. One bug has shown a lot of mistakes in the match engine, which does not deal with them properly. I encourage you to watch this abnormal performance and create your own opinion.

I would like to add that after loading the game, the two managers managed to play the match with both teams being present on the field.