My Leeds team are flying. 3 points clear @ the top of League 1. Let in 17 goals in 22 games (rest are on about 25 already) and my strike force of Lucciano Becchio and Daryl Murphy are scoring for fun. Also I signed Chris Rawlins from Liverpool, he's a quality young midfielder

Do you have to install Steam for FM 2009, or can you play the game without it?

I had to for mine.

Don't think so. I used to be able to play it without going through steam. It's probably worth playing it on steam as it will give you the latest update, although that's probably not needed with an older game.

Steam is an interesting idea. They've tried to make it a gaming hub, much like the consoles handle games. You can download demos, buy games, get updates, add friends, chat, earn achievements etc. But it does take up system memory sitting there doing nothing most of the time. It also seems to make a mountain of a molehill when installing and running games.

Most annoying thing with steam is when I'm at my mate's. His internet is one and off, sometimes, it says everything is connected but there is no connectivity, so Steam reads it as being connected to the net but it won't start because there is no connection. It can be really annoying and we finally figured out, it's better to just disconnect everything and go offline if the net's playing up.

I like the look of it, they seem to have all sorts of offers on but I don't play games on my laptop other than FM. There's a demo on my games list called wings of prey, not sure what it is, anyone tried it?

Started a season as Welling United, in the Blue Square South, need some decent free midfield signings, any suggestions?

Sean Doherty was outstanding on the left wing for me at Fleetwood.
Also try and get Simon Heslop from Barnsley/ He's listed at around £5k but can be got for nothing if you're lucky.

I've just got automatic promotion from the BSN with Fleetwood. Brought in a couple of players (signed two of last season's loanees permanently (Terry Gornell from Tranmere and Liam Dawson from Oldham) and re-loaned another (Spencer Harris from Huddersfied).

After a pretty miserable pre-season, life in the BSP hasn't started too badly. Set a target of "learn from your experience in the BPS (whatever that means), I'm on four points from the first two games.

It means get relegated with dignity.

Touch wood, but things are going slightly better than that. Only defeats from the first six games were at home to Oxford and away to Histon. Managed to clock up a good 1-0 win at York with a makeshift side full of youngsters. This looks like being a really tight league.

One thing that is concerning me a bit is the finances.

I've not spent any of my transfer budget (all signings have been freebies) and I'm around £800 under my £11k weekly wage limit but the club is still losing money hand over fist. There was a deficit of £250k at the end of last season before a board takeover. Even after the takeover, with bigger crowds in the BSP and a similar wage budget (I've shipped out / offered pay cuts to any high earners who weren't making the first team) we're looking at monthly losses of around £15k-£20k. Part of me says not to worry, after all the chairman could be happy to underwrite this in the short term and we're expected to make the FA Cup first round as a minimum. Draw depending, should also do well OK in the Trophy which will bring a few quid in. The board say that they are "content" with the wage bill but I'm just slightly concerned that I've got Peter Ridsdale as a chairman with no concept of budgeting that will try to pin the blame on me when the poop hits the fan.