I have a soft spot for Akwasi Fobi-Edusei. In a glorious season around 2003 he fired Gillingham out of the Championship and into the splendour of the Premier League.

Plucked from the youth ranks and plunged into the first team, he darted and dashed, poached and pressed. He scored goals for fun. He went from a nobody to one of football's most exciting prospects.

He was the cutting edge for a Gills' side full of vim and vigor.

Just 12 months later, however, the dream had soured. Life in the top flight was unrelenting. Financial pressures meant the Gills' brief foray into the promised land was short-lived. Bottom of the table by season's end, the relegation trapdoor opened and it fell right through.

The manager, who had led the team not only to the world's most lucrative division but also to an FA Cup final to boot, lasted only a few weeks back in the Championship before, with little warning, chairman Paul Scally handed him a P45 and told him to sling his hook.

But what a ride it was. The manager at the helm during those halcyon days still looks back fondly at how he defied the odds and delivered a piece of history for Kent football. I know this, because he was me.

This, of course, didn't really happen. Well, not in real life anyway, But when you've allowed yourself to be trapped within the snare that is the all-engrossing Football Manager game, the line between fact and fiction is not just blurred but obliterated.

Gillingham didn't ever make the Premier League, and nor have I ever been even approached, even in some hilarious case of mistaken identify, to be its manager. And quite rightly too.

But Football Manager - the latest incarnation of which comes to rob people of their social lives this week - allows you to live the dream.

A PC simulation of life in the dug-out, it gives the humble football fan the chance to experience the highs and lows of managing any team in the world, juggling the egos and delivering the glory they alone are convinced their tactical genius can provide.

There's everything from having conversations with players fuming over the lack of playing time they are getting - while having to button your lip to prevent the influential players turning the dressing room against you - to trawling the lower leagues looking for youngsters with a spark of talent which could flourish and deliver either a future superstar or, at least, a sizeable transfer fee at a future point. Assuming, of course, you haven't failed in hitting your season's targets and been unceremoniously shown the door.

Days could be spent simply fine-tuning training regimes and trying not to upset players in press conferences. It could consume your life.

Back in those heady Gillingham days, watching the match itself play out wasn't even delivered with any suitable graphics. Just an updating text commentary. Oh for that flashing bar which heralded another great goal. Oh the agony when 'It's red' flashes up and your central defender is heading for an early bath after a rather rash tackle in the opening 15 minutes.

The fact 20 years later I still remember Edusei's name and the gut wrenching sensation of the rollercoaster ride coming to an end at 'Priestfield' says two things. One, the trials and tribulations of Football Manager (or, Championship Manager as it was known back then) stay with you. And, second, I need to get out more.

But I am far from alone is succumbing to its charms over the years. Surf the web and there are tales of students who prioritised leading their team to triumph over their degree course, with the inevitable consequences. Or of 'managers' leading their team into a major cup final and allowing the big game to play out on screen at 3am while dressed in a suit and tie - suitable attire to befit such an occasion.

Relationships have, surely floundered as a result.

Not long after my Gillingham adventure coming to an end, and some miserable performances in my endless pursuit of taking a lower league team up the ranks, I decided I had to go cold turkey.

I've dabbled in the intervening years, but when my youngest son was recently bitching about a row he was having with a particularly ego-crazed Arsenal midfielder after he bought a recent version, I remembered why it was so good. It teaches you the fine art of diplomacy. It teaches you that glory is but fleeting.

It taught me to look it up again.

The PC version today is a rather splendid thing, where matches are played out with 'proper graphics' so you can see just who to blame (and give the hair-dryer treatment to at half-time) for each goal...but, frankly, I don't have the time or inclination to sit in front of my desktop machine any longer than the KM pays me for.

Instead I plumped for the slimmed down Football Manager Touch version on the iPad. And what fun I've had since then. I'll save you some great times at the helm of Preston and Sheffield Wednesday, and say only that Wrexham have gone from the National League to League One under my, ahem, expert guidance. I am hooked again.

The only good thing is that Football Manager 2022, which will, inevitably, be sold in its millions, has decided not to produce the Touch variation for the iPad anymore. I will be forced to hang up my sheepskin coat at some point. Part of me will be glad.

As for Akwasi Edusei, that goal scoring machine from those heady days of success?

Well, in reality, he made a mere handful of appearances for the Gills before starting a footballing descent into the non-leagues - turning out for the likes of Margate, Ramsgate and Tonbridge. He has, however, one life-long fan in me.

Football Manager 2022 is released today.

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