On the Bench is a football management game where your aim is to manage a team from the top four divisions in English football to become champions as well as win cups over various seasons. After selecting your team, increasing capacity of your ground, and seeing your pre-season accounts you are presented with a main menu of options. Here you can see your squad, sell any player or select the players, train certain parts of the squad or train them all, look at your fixtures, table and stats, and finally enquiry about other players to buy.

Once you are happy withe your selections you then watch your next game which is text only. A clock counts upwards and any major incidents that happen appear. Once the game has finished you look at your weekly accounts before preparing for your next match.