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Johnny Cooper, Championship Manager: The Second Season Syndrome
Johnny Cooper, Championship The Second Season Syndrome book is Chris Darwen's second book in the Johnny Cooper series. Again using the legendary computer game, Championship Manager, to create the narrative and events you will join Johnny as he prepares to start his second season in charge of Mansfield Town FC.
Can he do better than his first season, or will he suffer from the classic second season syndrome?
In this book, Chris Darwen helps us learn more about Johnny Cooper, the man and manager. He takes us deeper into Johnny's past and his psyche, whilst very much maintaining the same style of parody diary as the first book.
Follow Chris on Twitter @comeontheoviedo and visit his website www.chrisdarwen.com
Pick up Johnny Cooper's managerial career, following his first season in charge of Mansfield Town FC.
Can he do better than his first season, or will he suffer from the classic second season syndrome?
In this book, Chris Darwen helps us learn more about Johnny Cooper, the man and manager. He takes us deeper into Johnny's past and his psyche, whilst very much maintaining the same style of parody diary as the first book.
Follow Chris on Twitter @comeontheoviedo and visit his website www.chrisdarwen.com
Pick up Johnny Cooper's managerial career, following his first season in charge of Mansfield Town FC.
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 29, 2014
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 18, 2016
Picking up at the start of the second season in the game, Johnny Cooper is readying himself to get ready to try once again to reach for success with Mansfield Town.
The Second Season Syndrome is stylistically the same as the first. It’s a day-to-day journal retelling the events of Darwen’s Johnny Cooper CM save.
I bought this book the day after I bought the first one back in October, although considering the shortcomings of the first, I almost didn’t after banging it out before breakfast when insomnia woke me up at 4AM.
I have to say that I am happily surprised with how this book turned out compared to the second one. The facts are the same and are quick one-liners for the most part giving recaps of the day-to-day life of managing Mansfield, courting with other teams, and moving to Wigan for a new job, but in this entry we see Darwen employ creative writing to give Johnny a personality and a life.
At the time of the start of the book his marriage is failing and the missus says he needs a shrink or she’s leaving him. Darwen uses these visits to the headshrinker to expand upon the protagonist. We knew from the first book that he was a Wimbledon man and that he had an unnamed missus, but in the next book we see pages of review of the sessions in the journal where it’s written in what went on. We know what each session was about, we have dialogue, and we learn about Cooper’s youth, his parents, the details of his injury-prone career, and more. This is everything that I was expecting to see in the first book, and it helped me attach to the story a bit more, as I know had an idea of Cooper’s psyche and the pressures he had to deal with to make it all work for him.
There is a weakness to the writing for me, though. In the journal, the missus insists that the sessions are needed to “save the marriage”. Okay, that makes me think it’s more of a marriage counselling thing, and there’s differences in personality that need to be resolved to make it work. These sessions, in fact, always about Mr. Cooper’s clear battles with insecurity, stress, perhaps depression, etc, and it’s never clearly established why this is a problem for the marriage to Mrs. Cooper, how resolving these issues can change the marriage, etc. When Cooper refers back to why he is in with the doctor, it’s always just “to save the marriage”, and the more I read that line throughout the story, the more I get confused by it, because there’s no readily obvious connection between this notion of “saving the marriage” and helping him fight his own demons.
Although the details to the actual gameplay are identical to my review for the first book, which makes it a dry retelling at times, this book is still a vast improvement over the first, and it’s well worth reading if you love CM/FM books and can make it through the first one with enough enthusiasm to want to buy the next one.
I had to stretch the first review for the first book a bit to give it a 3/5, mainly due to being a biased fan of Darwen’s other writing, but I am genuinely willing to give this one a 4/5. It’s really a fantastic read, as far as CM/FM books go, and since it cost only 3 or 4 US Dollars, like the other book (IIRC), it’s a fun and affordable thing to read once or twice.
The Second Season Syndrome is stylistically the same as the first. It’s a day-to-day journal retelling the events of Darwen’s Johnny Cooper CM save.
I bought this book the day after I bought the first one back in October, although considering the shortcomings of the first, I almost didn’t after banging it out before breakfast when insomnia woke me up at 4AM.
I have to say that I am happily surprised with how this book turned out compared to the second one. The facts are the same and are quick one-liners for the most part giving recaps of the day-to-day life of managing Mansfield, courting with other teams, and moving to Wigan for a new job, but in this entry we see Darwen employ creative writing to give Johnny a personality and a life.
At the time of the start of the book his marriage is failing and the missus says he needs a shrink or she’s leaving him. Darwen uses these visits to the headshrinker to expand upon the protagonist. We knew from the first book that he was a Wimbledon man and that he had an unnamed missus, but in the next book we see pages of review of the sessions in the journal where it’s written in what went on. We know what each session was about, we have dialogue, and we learn about Cooper’s youth, his parents, the details of his injury-prone career, and more. This is everything that I was expecting to see in the first book, and it helped me attach to the story a bit more, as I know had an idea of Cooper’s psyche and the pressures he had to deal with to make it all work for him.
There is a weakness to the writing for me, though. In the journal, the missus insists that the sessions are needed to “save the marriage”. Okay, that makes me think it’s more of a marriage counselling thing, and there’s differences in personality that need to be resolved to make it work. These sessions, in fact, always about Mr. Cooper’s clear battles with insecurity, stress, perhaps depression, etc, and it’s never clearly established why this is a problem for the marriage to Mrs. Cooper, how resolving these issues can change the marriage, etc. When Cooper refers back to why he is in with the doctor, it’s always just “to save the marriage”, and the more I read that line throughout the story, the more I get confused by it, because there’s no readily obvious connection between this notion of “saving the marriage” and helping him fight his own demons.
Although the details to the actual gameplay are identical to my review for the first book, which makes it a dry retelling at times, this book is still a vast improvement over the first, and it’s well worth reading if you love CM/FM books and can make it through the first one with enough enthusiasm to want to buy the next one.
I had to stretch the first review for the first book a bit to give it a 3/5, mainly due to being a biased fan of Darwen’s other writing, but I am genuinely willing to give this one a 4/5. It’s really a fantastic read, as far as CM/FM books go, and since it cost only 3 or 4 US Dollars, like the other book (IIRC), it’s a fun and affordable thing to read once or twice.
January 4, 2016
The further adventures of Johnny Cooper, after an eye-catching season in charge of Mansfield Town, he is approached by Wigan to try and perform the same type of miracle, while at the same time, trying to find the perfect work/Life balance.
I can only hope this is not the last we've heard of Johnny Cooper!
I can only hope this is not the last we've heard of Johnny Cooper!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews