George hosts on his own this week, because Ed is off doing “something.” He might not make any sense because of a frazzled brain courtesy of Amsterdam and 12 hours sleep.

George is joined by Alexi Duggins this week, he’s a relative newcomer to the FM community. By day he’s a journalist, and also by day he spends an awful lot of his time playing Football Manager. He also doesn’t like fish and chips.

The question of the week is all about achieving a healthy life / Football Manager balance. Alexi keeps a balance via the medium of his girlfriend. Disapproval is okay, outrage means it’s time to stop. He also fell of the wagon a while ago, only to climb back on in November.

George doesn’t have that luxury though, so he looks to the community for advice. And unfortunately they can’t provide him with any.

And then there’s all of this good stuff as well –

• Alexi talks us through his voyage of discovery in FM16. He’s three seasons into an Aston Villa save and it’s all going okay. This afternoon they went top of the league after an FA Cup winning second year in charge. Finishing is his main problem at the moment.
• George has churned through his pre-season at Crystal Palace. He’s got in Dele Alli on a free transfer, which is pretty good going. He’s fairly sure that Gabriel Barbosa’s Chelsea is going to take them to pieces though.
• Then we have a chat about the reasons Alexi has been pulled back into Football Manager. Spoilers: he doesn’t really know himself.
• And we discuss how he likes Football Manager but isn’t that into football in real life.

There’s a lot more Football Manager gold as well, and you can listen to it all in the SoundCloud player below. Or if you’d prefer head over to iTunes and search for Deep Lying Podcast.