How can anyone hate Champman.tv? Everyone loves it, right? It's big, clever, slickly put together and, for a recent addition to the scene, oozing with content.

Effortlessly winning awards from other CM sites with all the gravitas of an Alan Bennett production at the BAFTAs, cm.tv is surely above any serious criticism. Or is it?

On first impression, the site looks like the behemoth that it clearly is. With its vision statement, 'Total CM Resources', cm.tv represents the next generation of The Dugout-style endeavours, a hub for exhaustive levels of information about all aspects of the game. Its homepage lets you know you're in for a mass of detail, with the sections (Players, Tactics, etc) on the left, links to latest additions on the right and your latest news bang in the middle. Currently, there's a picture of Cafu dominating the page. Apparently, he's won some prize or other, and the photo's a very nicely presented one.

So what makes cm.tv so popular? Quite simply, it has everything. The design is your crisp white text on black background standard, and crucially, the various sections within the site are easy to find. Considering the labyrinthine number of pages they have on offer, navigationally they cannot be faulted.

But what about the content? Was it Oscar Wilde who once claimed that website design and navigation constituted pretty window dressing, but content was the real dog's bollocks? I think it probably was, and let's face it, he was right, wasn't he? It is here that we discover that cm.tv might have more to look at than you could get through in an average tea break, but the overall quality of its offerings leave something to be desired.

Take the Editorials archive, with its stories, columns, rants, and the grandly titled 'Specials'. These are written by a number of contributors, the best of whom is scene veteran, Sheikh. I think this guy can really put his words together, but he is severely let down by his pals. Criticisms over poor use of English aside (I could go on), I was struck by how bored I became by the verbiage on offer. There wasn't a subject covered that I hadn't already read many times elsewhere, which is not a crime in itself, but what did rankle was the failure of anyone to come up with new approaches when tackling a topic. The lack of imagination was stifling. This struck me most when running through the 'Make a CM site' series, a step-by-step guide that I read quite closely when preparing ver Stuff for launch. Unfortunate then, that there was little of value here. The page about adding content advised me to write my own material rather than steal from other sites, which was invaluable to a peasant like me (imagine how my site might have turned out if I hadn't latched onto that gem!). Then I found the knowledge on hosting, only when I went to visit the recommended FS2 to sign up for free online publishing, discovered that this was no longer on offer. Ultimately, I went elsewhere for my advice, which ought to be as close to a damning indictment as it gets.

The Tactics zone offers, well, tactics really, and lots of them. The tactic reviews had a disappointing lack of breadth about them. Okay so they informed me about how to arrange my players (always important, except perhaps to Ossie Ardiles) and set Team Instructions, but there wasn't much else. I would like to have known why I should use this tactic, how exactly it works and maybe even some real-life precedents of it in action, but all I got was the typical "I got 2,000 goals in 10 games with this one". I did, however, manage a chuckle from the tactic called Joan Cruiff, presumably the great man's little sister, who spelled her surname differently.

By this time, I was starting to lose the will to live. The stuff on players came up with reams of must-buys, next to more specialised reviews along the "Buy Saviola and he'll get 2,000 goals in 10 games" line. Does he? I did not know that. The Downloads Centre contains many patches. In the Graphics Gallery, you can feast yourself on skins, menubars and the ever-popular, always mirthful ker-azy screenshots. I never get sick of these, damn your eyes. There was fun to be had here too. You could tell this by the section entitled 'Fun Zone', as though laughs were to be walled up within their own confined space. So what fun is on offer today? There was a quiz, which was over-subscribed, and a chatroom. Fun? I was reaching for the pills bottle.

The CM Scene area does show some promise, with its unusually biting reviews. What it had to say about CM Star, for example, was quite unfair, but at least it got a reaction. This was quite unlike the offerings within Help Guides, where every inch of the game was explored. Twice. Several weeks ago, I learned that a league guide had been copied wholesale from the aforementioned CM Star, which begged the inevitable question - is this the only time they've done this? And if not, do the words of wisdom within 'Make a CM site' guide come across as a teensy bit hypocritical?

At the risk of sounding like Tom Paulin, I thought cm.tv essentially lacked heart. Unlike its truly zany yet neatly sectioned Fun Zone, the site just wasn't any fun, and this is kind of strange because surely that is what Championship Manager - even football, whatever Bill Shankley tells you - is all about. Compare this gargantuan effort with Love of Champman, which might not be half the site in terms of resources but is clearly head over heels about CM, and what you're left with is something of a monolith, a big object without depth, and crucially, without much soul.

This isn't to say that cm.tv is all poor. It isn't. And even if you think so, the site has received over 500,000 hits in its four months of life to disprove you. There is massive potential here, but there's also a need to realise that a site can spread itself too thinly over too many areas, rather than concentrate on its strengths. I have it as a 'Stuff really likes' because there is no better resource domain at the moment, though that is partly due to the lack of updates from The Dugout and CM Gamer's apparent lack of interest in the scene it dominates. Maybe it could be case that enhanced competition from these fellow giants will force it to buck its ideas up. I hope so.