Eidos Interactive announced Championship Manager Online to the City early this morning, promising to launch the subscription-only "massively multiplayer online football management simulation" at www.cm-online.com in January 2005.

The game, in development at Jadestone, is a completely separate entity to Championship Manager 5, although it is being produced in conjunction with CM5 developer Beautiful Game Studios, Eidos told the City this morning.

The game will work by letting players choose from clubs in one of six national leagues (England, Scotland, Italy, Spain, Germany and France) and then splitting them into separate "worlds" so there is only ever one of each player's chosen club in each individual world. New leagues will be added and the game continually updated to reflect events in world football.

Players will then be able to deal with transfers, tactics, training and everything else in-between, whilst taking advantage of SMS updates to stay abreast of progress, and utilising a "buddy league" mode that allows you to compete in a league against specific people.

Expect to hear more on Championship Manager Online soon.