I was in the same situation a few years back and went for the Auto
After 3 years I did get sick of the auto and currently are in a manual hatch, the autos are not too bad i had mine tuned by SAS and made it a lot more fun, had no issues at all with it
I found it hard trying to sell my auto one, although they are a reasonably niche market as are the manual ones, currently hard cars to sell so I'd highly recommend get a manual if that's what your really after, I paid 18k for my manual but had highish kms and motor was rebuilt