Career Armstrong shooting for 1000 goals

[BatiGoal]

I opted for a bigger league in La Liga because it's easier to keep big players at any team with decent success. But man playing in weaker leagues certainly has its charm too. Look at those goals!!! I've only managed hat-tricks so far. I actually thought Armstrong would be pushing for a new team or league by now. The guy isn't demanding bigger contracts??

[Ashez]

Yes! There's that big season I've been hoping for! Come on mate! 

[Real_Random]

Goal total is looking much healthier mate. KIU

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

I opted for a bigger league in La Liga because it's easier to keep big players at any team with decent success. But man playing in weaker leagues certainly has its charm too. Look at those goals!!! I've only managed hat-tricks so far. I actually thought Armstrong would be pushing for a new team or league by now. The guy isn't demanding bigger contracts??

He's hit five a couple of times before, but first time getting six. He's at 46 goals from 26 games at the moment, so if I can keep that up, we're looking a LOT better. But each year he'll hit a patch where his form will drop and it will only be a goal every 3 or 4 games. The one time he didn't do that was when he had 2 months of injured and came back fresh. I can't give him 2 months off, but I'm resting him more, especially against big teams in Europe, to keep him fresh for the smaller teams.

Armstrong is happy to keep collecting his £30K per week. No need for £300K contracts like some of the other guys, or moves to the big teams. Partly this this is because he's actually not that good in world terms. If you surround him with great players and set up a system where he's the focal point, he'll score a lot. But if he moved to Real Madrid and had to fit in to their system, it probably wouldn't work out. Basically he's a Celtic sized player...

Also, I don't have the in game editor so can't see the status of the team, but at this point Celtic must be World Class or close to it. I can see my manager profile of course and I'm World Class, so Celtic is a place a lot of people are happy to come to. There are still about 1000 people who won't show up if I turn the Interested filter on, but most of those will come if you offer them a lot of money. 

It wasn't always like that - this has been a real slow build up, each year getting better and better players, and better and better facilities, and it's only in the last year or two that we've really been able to compete with the best in the world. And hopefully the goals will keep flowing like this! 

14 hours ago, Ashez said:

Yes! There's that big season I've been hoping for! Come on mate! 

Thanks! If he can keep up the current rate, this season will be even better!

Edited January 2, 2017 by scratch99

[Scratch]

11 hours ago, Real_Random said:

Goal total is looking much healthier mate. KIU

Thanks for the support - I'm actually starting to have some hope that this can be done!

[Scratch]

If Armstrong finishes on 999 goals, he's really going to regret this:

He missed one earlier in the match, but can't believe he gave that one up...

Edited January 2, 2017 by scratch99

[PriZe]

*FACEPALM* stupid game sometimes....

[anfieldsquirrel]

Just caught up with this mate, you're killing it! 

Hopefully he won't get too big for his boots any time soon! 

[Scratch]

6 hours ago, PriZe said:

*FACEPALM* stupid game sometimes....

Hehe, actually if I put aside my 'desperate to reach 1K' mindset for a minute, this is a good thing. I like that players occasionally ignore the manager's instructions, as that actually happens in real life. And it is the first time it's happened in 8 seasons...

But with my 1K cap on - this was a giant, (almost) unforgivable mistake by Armstrong! He needs to get serious about this... 

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, anfieldsquirrel said:

Just caught up with this mate, you're killing it! 

Hopefully he won't get too big for his boots any time soon! 

Thanks! He'll be right. Not a trouble maker at all (apart from ignoring penalty and corner instructions!). I renewed his contract recently and he only wanted 30K. Some guys on the team are on 325K... Also he keeps telling the press how I'm getting the best of him. Can't see him going anywhere...

[Scratch]

Season 9 complete. Will post the update tomorrow, but I think this moment deserves it's own post right now (in spoiler in case you want to wait!):

Spoiler

 

No way was that offside Rossi!

 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by scratch99

[Taff]

Amazing fella well done

[Scratch]

19 hours ago, Taff said:

Amazing fella well done

Thanks Taff!

[Scratch]

Season 9 Update

 

Season 8 was our best season yet, with 70 goals for Armstrong. Can we top that in season 9? If you were paying attention to my previous posts, you'll know the answer! Let's go through the motions anyway...

 

Preseason

 

Although I was happy with the team coming into the season, it concerned me that my top 4 central midfielders were all 28 to 30. Although they were at the top of their game, they wouldn't stay that way for too many more seasons, so I decided to bring in some younger blood. 

 

I sold Yannick Gerhardt to Southampton for £24M and decided to open the purse strings. Augusto Diogo, a youngster from Porto, came in for £26.5M (he's one for the future). Jay Tanner joined us from Man Utd for £51M. He was already pretty good when he joined, but after a month Harry Kewell, my Assistant Manager, knocked on the door and whispered that I should come see this:

 

Not bad... I also had a glut of keepers, so I sold the two who had been my first choice at the start of season 8. Timo Horn, who was still our best keeper, had already started to degrade at 31, so he went Fiorentina for £10M. Alex Marriot, who I'd planned to replace Horn, was no longer our most promising youngster, so he went to Napoli for £22.5M. We went into the season with Alban Lafont, a free agent from Toulouse, as our first choice and 3 fantastic youngsters fighting to replace him.

 

The biggest signing of preseason was Kingsley Coman, who I'd missed out on a couple of times thanks to Chelsea and injury. He cost £115M plus a £22M player (Balde Keita), which was quite a price considering he was already 28 years old and that we had a lot of players in that position already (including Castro who's even better than Coman). But my hope was that Coman's assist to goal ratio would be higher than any of the other options, which would help Armstrong with his target. 

 

Season

 

Armstrong got the season underway with a hat-trick, which was a sign of things to come:

 

He got a goal in the second game, followed by a hat-trick (and 2 missed penalties) in the third:

 

September was a bad month for the team, with both Coman (2 months) and Tanner (1 month) getting injured. That's £188M worth of players out injured... 

 

In November, Armstrong got the second red card of his career: 

 

which gave backup Timo Werner the chance to show what he can do (nice to have good cover):

 

And of course Armstrong scored 6 goals against Ross County in December, but that screenshot is above so I won't repeat it here. This match turned out to also be a turning point for Coman. Before that point, his ratings had been low and he was taking lots of shots each game but making no assists. A waste of £115M (plus Keita), I thought. But he made 4 assists in this game and was much more Coman-like from here on out. I didn't make any changes, he just went from this sort of performance: 

to this sort:

 

Goals

 

Here is the first half of Armstrong's season:

 

And the second half:

 

You'll notice that there are quite a few gaps in there when Armstrong missed games. One was the red card ban of course, but the others are all strategic rests to keep him fresh. Basically whenever we played someone big in Europe, I left him out. Maybe he'd pick up a goal in those games (or maybe or not), but I'd rather keep him fresh for the small teams, where he's much more likely to grab a bag of goals. 

 

I'd been toying with this idea for a couple of seasons, but couldn't bring myself to do it until now. Every year he'd had periods where he'd gone off the boil and I thought it was to do freshness. I could actually see it in the highlights - when he's tired, his shots are lacklustre compared to the rockets he fires when he is fresh.

 

Anyway, this plan seemed to work because he ended up scoring 81 goals in 53 games.

 

His best season by far! He's now up to 501 goals for Celtic in 9 seasons. Halfway! Here's the chart:

 

 

If we could keep this pace up for a while he'd be looking good! Realistically though, he's turned 28, so I think the best we can hope for is for the next 500 to be a mirror of the first 500. Another 9 seasons, taking him to 37 years old. The first couple of seasons returning 70 or 80 goals, then a bunch of years in the 50 to 60 range, before scraping over the line with a couple of 40 goal years. Not much margin for error...

 

Results

 

This year we won everything:

 

In the league we went 36 - 1 - 1, with 117 goals for and 19 against. Not quite as good as last year, but I'll take it. We won the Scottish Cup 4 - 0 over Hearts and the Betfred Cup 3 - 1 over St Mirren. 

 

In the Champions League, we beat Barcelona 6 - 5 over two legs (more on that below), then Man Utd 4 - 3, then Sevilla 7 - 1 (revenge for last year's final!). In the final, we beat PSG 1 - 0:

 

It could have been much more. It was interesting that PSG had Men Behind the Ball for the entire game. They were so scared of us, they didn't even try to score after we went ahead early in the game. It's nice to be respected, but it makes it harder for Armstrong to score.

 

Awards

 

Armstrong won the World Player of the Year award for the second year in a row:

 

Of course he won the Scottish Premiership Player of the Year award again and I also got the Manager of the Year award again (they must be sick of my whinging!):

 

Tactics

 

We're still using the 4 3 2 1 formation with 2 5 3 as a backup and it's working well. At the suggestion of @BatiGoal , I changed the centre back pairing to CD BPD, which has worked well. I think it's contributed to our slightly leakier defense, but there have been other contributors to that and, let's face it, it's still pretty good. At the other end there have been more chances. It's impossible to isolate this as the cause for that change, but I feel like it's been part of reason.

 

Teammate - Simon Tibbling 

 

I just want take a moment to highlight an important member of the team: Simon Tibbling:

 

He's 30 now and his attributes are not quite what they were at their peak. We got him on a free transfer 6 years ago and he's been immense for us:

 

One of our best players every year and our leading provider of assists. We have quite a few players who you'd have to say were better than Tibbling, but he's the second on the teamsheet (behind Armstrong) and the player who will be hardest to replace when the time comes. 

 

Do it for the fans!

 

What do you do when you've rested your main striker and you're 4 - 2 down on aggregate to Barcelona and your backup striker gets injured:

 

Do you panic? Or do you turn to the youngster on the bench beside you and say:

 

"Remember how the fans got so upset when we signed you? How they protested so much the board started saying that I'd make a mistake? I told you that I believed in you and that I knew your time would come. And so it has. You are going to go on to that field and you are going to win this game for us. And you're not going to do it for me or even for yourself. You're going to do it for the fans. They can be misguided at times, but it's because they have such passion for this club. You've seen the bad side of that. Now, you are going to go and win this match for us and they will love you for it. They'll be talking about you for the next 50 years boy."

 

 

"Oh and by the way, it's back on the bench for you next week, because Armstrong will be back in and I believe in him even more than I believe in you! But good job anyway..."

 

Finally

 

What is our hero doing now, after scoring 81 goals in a season? 

 

Relaxing? Fair enough Adam, fair enough... We'll see you next season.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by scratch99

[PriZe]

BOOM! nice going m8  great total for the season, and a very nice addition to the team

[Scratch]

3 minutes ago, PriZe said:

BOOM! nice going m8  great total for the season, and a very nice addition to the team

Thanks! It's all came together perfectly this season. And it's great to get Tanner on board as he can go the distance with Armstrong now. A bit scared to start next season though as it can't be as good as this one, LOL!

[BatiGoal]

Killer season. Really looking much better now and it's true that it's all down to that lil tiny tweak at the back

Joking aside, all bits do help and do add up at this point and getting 81 goals is a fantastic achievement. BTW love the 'do it for the fans' touch. Bates instantly became a fans' favorite. KIU mate!

[Ashez]

That's some transfer window! Bloody massive season though, I knew that was coming! Going to be tight but the dream is alive! Also great update mate! 

[Jack]

Absolutely amazing season mate. Great idea about keeping the player fresh too, definitely nabbing that.

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Killer season. Really looking much better now and it's true that it's all down to that lil tiny tweak at the back

Joking aside, all bits do help and do add up at this point and getting 81 goals is a fantastic achievement. BTW love the 'do it for the fans' touch. Bates instantly became a fans' favorite. KIU mate!

Yep all down to that one tweak alright!  I'll take all the help I can get at this point.

As for Bates, he's getting more playing time than expected in Season 10. Armstrong out for 2 months! 

[Scratch]

12 hours ago, Ashez said:

That's some transfer window! Bloody massive season though, I knew that was coming! Going to be tight but the dream is alive! Also great update mate! 

Thanks! I'd just about given up, but that season has me hanging in there. You're not wrong about it being tight though. I think I remember people talking about a bug when FMM 2017 first came out where players were playing to 54 years old, etc - hope they haven't fixed that yet. Might need it..

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, Jack said:

Absolutely amazing season mate. Great idea about keeping the player fresh too, definitely nabbing that.

Yeah it seems to work - at least for this player. As I said, I can see his shots aren't full strength after he's played too much, so I'm pretty confident that he needs the rest, but maybe other players cope better. I'd love to hear what others experience. 

This season I'm keeping him fresh by having him injured for 2 months! 

[Scratch]

Season 10 Update 

 

Another season older, another season wiser, but how much closer to 1000 goals? If Armstrong can score 80 like last season, he still has a chance of pulling this off.

 

Preseason

 

With the team in a fairly strong place, we didn't *need* to do much business, but of course we did.

 

Striker Timo Werner wasn't getting much game time and we had a bunch of other good backups for Armstrong, so when PSG came knocking with £36M, we invited them in for a cup of tea and took their money.

 

We also sold off a bunch of youngsters who didn't quite make it. Frustratingly, players who fall into this category often show up when I search for players fitting the attribute profiles I'm after... Still, we can't keep them all. 

 

We didn't buy any first team starters, but we bought a bunch of very promising 16 to 18 year olds. Most of these were in the £5M to £8M range, but the highest cost £23M (Jesus Morales from Real Madrid). Time will tell if any of these mature into players who'll break into the first team, or whether they'll just end up frustrating me in the search results, but I have decent hopes for this bunch.

 

Season

 

We always seem sharpest early in the season, as St Mirren learned to their horror:

 

An utterly dominant 9-0 victory, with hat-tricks to Armstrong and Castro. They say St Mirren fans still wake screaming in the middle of the night because of this.

 

However, it didn't take long for the nightmare to become ours:

 

Armstrong out for 2 months:

 

Well, there goes the hopes of another 80 goal season. Still, the last time he was out for 2 months, he managed to come back and score 40 goals from 47 games. His scoring rate is much higher now, so if he can get 47 games in, he might be able to score enough goals to keep the dream alive. But boy, did this injury affect his attributes!

 

And what's with those little blips for his physical attributes earlier in the year? They weren't there when he was younger, that line was solid. He's still only 28, it's surely too early for him to start showing signs of aging, isn't it?

 

It took him a few games to find his grove again and he was a little over reliant on penalties to boost his numbers, but the good news is that he was soon scoring freely again.

 

Probably the most interesting game of the season was this one in March:

 

It had a lot going on. An 8-0 victory. A hat-trick for Armstrong. A missed penalty, although he scored the rebound. Then a disallowed goal late in stoppage time. Whew!

 

Goals

 

Here's the first half of Armstrong's season:

 

And here's the second (note the fantastic end: 3 in the last round of the league, 2 in the Scottish Cup Final, 3 in the Champions League Final):

 

He bounced back from his injury to score 59 goals in 48 games, which is a great result under the circumstances:

 

That takes him to 560 goals for Celtic in 10 seasons. Here's the chart:

 

Is it enough? Only time will tell, but we need more goals in the bank. He's 29 now and still has 440 to go... Looks tough, but we're taking it one game at a time and he's giving it 110%. 

 

Results

 

In the league we won all 38 games. No draws. No losses. 117 goals for and 12 against. Not bad. We won the Scottish Cup Final 4 - 0 over Dunfermline (two to Armstrong) and the Betfred Cup Final 1 - 0 over Rangers (Armstrong scoring the goal).

 

In the Champions League, we beat Inter 7 - 4 over two legs, then Athletico Madrid 4 - 1 and then Arsenal 4 - 1. In the final, we beat Barcelona 4 - 3:

 

A hat-trick from Armstrong and a disallowed goal (that would have wrapped things up in normal time), followed by a very tense extra time. An own goal by Barcelona in the 120th minute decided the match, after I'd already accepted it was going to penalties. I'm won't lie - I had to go and have a sit down after this one...

 

It does show that Armstrong can score against big opposition, but I tried playing him in many of the earlier rounds instead of resting him, and he found it more difficult to score. I still think he needs to be fresh to be at his best. The final came a full week after the Scottish Cup, which for some reason was 2 full weeks after the last game of the Premiership, so he was well rested for the game.

 

We also lost the Euro Super Cup 3 - 1 to Manchester City, even possession and shots were slightly in our favour, and we won the Club World Championship 3 - 0 over Seattle. No screenshots, as there are too many already and I'm hardly going to lie about either of those!

 

Awards

 

No World Player of the Year award for Armstrong this year. I'm not sure who won it, I just know there was no notification that Armstrong won it. He did win the Scottish Premiership Player of the Year award again, despite his injury:

 

 

And they decided that guiding Falkirk to 6th (admittedly a decent job):

 

is more deserving of the Manager of the Year award than winning every game, with a goal difference of 105... They did make me the runner up though. 

 

Goal Keeper Dramas

 

I'd been really happy with Timo Horn in season 8, but sold him because I managed to sign Alban Lafont, who had 30 caps for France and looked like he might be better. My general approach is to have 1 world class keeper, backed up by 2 or 3 very promising youngsters, so there wasn't room for both Horn and Lafont. Lafont was a good keeper and did a great job for us. But... (you all knew there was a 'but' coming)

 

When I gave the youngsters a little run in the team, he went to the press about being left out (this is after 5 games, much quicker than most). Horn never minded when that happened - he knew he was number one and would be back in the team shortly. Okay fine, that just shows Lafont's desire to play. But after he had a run back in the team, he still showed up as wanting to leave. I smoothed that over with a new contract. 

 

Now, up to this point, I was rolling with it. The lad wants to play. Fair enough. This is the life of a manager, trying to juggle squad. It's not all glamour and gleam. Then I noticed this:

 

As soon he signed the new contract, all his attributes dropped. Lazy bugger was taking it easy in training... Well that's not on. He was dropped to the bench and I went shopping as soon as I could. He was worth £19M, but Barcelona took him for £29M after an auction with Chelsea. And I bought Alex Domenichini from Roma for £21M instead - no caps, but even better attributes and I think I've finally solved the problem. It will be next season before I know for sure.

 

England

 

I don't even want the job anymore, but Gareth Southgate should be sacked for continuing to ignore a striker who's scored 560 league goals, who has won the Champions League 3 times and been named World Player of the Year twice. I mean Southgate has given 39 caps to this guy:

 

Maybe that's why England is now ranked behind Australia...

 

Oh well, as I've said before, if England isn't picking him, then he's fresher for us. And now he's 29, staying fresh next season is going to be very important. Until then....

 

[Real_Random]

19 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Maybe that's why England is now ranked behind Australia...

 

This is great, haven't seen something this great since we beat England 3-1 in 2003

[Taff]

Another good season mate, those injuries could be the killer but as you said only time will tell

[Scratch]

48 minutes ago, Real_Random said:

This is great, haven't seen something this great since we beat England 3-1 in 2003

I remember that game well! A great team and a great moment for Australian football! I'm not sure the rankings in this career are quite up there with that, but it certainly put a smile on my face.

Spoiler for next season though: Australia slips to 18th and the manager is sacked. Unfortunately there is no Apply For Job button for Australia. Seems you can't manage Australia in the game... or maybe you need the Australian league loaded.

Mind you, England are down to 21st, so the good news is we're still in front.

[Scratch]

50 minutes ago, Taff said:

Another good season mate, those injuries could be the killer but as you said only time will tell

Thanks mate. This whole career has felt like I'm behind the curve and it's going to be tough to pull it off, but never quite far enough behind that I could justify packing it in... I've definitely learnt a few lessons for next time and I'm hoping I can get in front the curve next time. Still, we're taking it one game at a time.

[Scratch]

7 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Spoiler for next season though: Australia slips to 18th and the manager is sacked. Unfortunately there is no Apply For Job button for Australia. Seems you can't manage Australia in the game... or maybe you need the Australian league loaded.

Oh, Australia still doesn't have a manager after 5 months. And still no way for me to apply. I guess it's the game's way of telling me to concentrate on getting Armstrong to 1000.

[BatiGoal]

Nice handling on the GK situation and I had similar issues re ITN games/goals in my career. I have the feeling it needs some tweaking in that regard. Still a good season despite the set backs. Keep going!!

[Ashez]

The detail is outstanding, you don't get enough credit for it so thought I'd mention it  

Shame the goals are down but I'm keeping the faith!