Career Jack Takes On The Latin Europe Challenge

[Jack.Holt]

Hi all. Long time Vibe lurker, first time career poster. Inspired by the 1K careers taken on by @BatiGoal and @scratch99 but I'm too scared to take it on myself right now. Not sure why I think this one will be any easier mind you!

Challenge rules can be found HERE.

Challenge creator can be found here: @BatiGoal.

Stage One: Italy

Theoretically this should be the easiest stage to complete. You can choose the club you like and therefore pretty much any player you like. The current record is 38 goals in a season. Should be a piece of cake!

[Jack.Holt]

Stage One: Italy

Club chosen: Juventus

Player chosen: Gonzalo Higuaín Paulo Dybala

It seemed a no-brainer to me that you'd start with a great side and a great player. I can only see this challenge getting tougher as we go along, so let's bed ourselves in as gently as possible!

I decided on Gonzalo Higuaín (who quickly hit 5 goals in 3 games) but who then picked up a 3 week injury followed by a 4 week injury. In the meantime Dybala came into the team and couldn't stop scoring, so I decided a switch would be the best option. I know there's no time limit on the challenge (other than the 30 years!) and there's a chance Higuaín still could have beat 38 goals, but it seemed silly to chance it. Dybala was on fire!

How we (myself, Paulo and Juventus as a whole) ultimately got on to follow...

[mcandrew003]

Good luck mate, Dybala seems a popular choice for this one!

[BatiGoal]

Great to hear the careers here inspired you to start one of your own. 

Can't wait to see you rip stage 1 apart

[Ashez]

Good luck  

[Jack]

Good luck!

[Jack.Holt]

@mcandrew003 @BatiGoal @Ashez @Jack Thanks for the welcome, guys.

[Jack.Holt]

Season One - Stage One

So, as stated above, I wanted to use Higuain as my main striker, but after a few injuries switched to Paulo Dybala. Regardless, they were the only two I wanted to keep, as if there's one thing I've learned reading the 1K careers it's that one striker formations work best (in the main - I'm not forgetting the @BatiGoal TKO formation!). With that being said, I went about slightly adjusting the squad:

The default formation Juventus use is a 5-3-2. I'm still learning my trade re: formations and tactics, so I decided to keep this in the main, but dropped one of the striker positions back to create a 5-3-1-1. This worked for a while, with almost all of our goals coming from Dybala, but we weren't scoring enough. It was a decent tactic which I may go back to on another save (it's a monster defensively) - but it wouldn't work long term on a goal scoring challenge. After a few games tweaking and trying things out, and using what I know from the 1K careers I've read, I settled on this:

Nothing special I know, but it soon did the job! The Super Cup had already been won, and as the season progressed the Italian Cup was added to it. Serie A was another story, however. INTER and ourselves were nip and tuck all season, with the title race going down to the final day of the season.

The season was a resounding success, but as it's with Juventus I won't take too much of the credit. I know the whole point of the challenge is to break to goal scoring records, but I'd like to be successful along the way! So, how did our man Paulo Dybala do?

He did OK. I'm happy with beating the record, of course, and 45 goals in a decent return. Winning Player of the Year was nice too! In the long term, though, with much bigger records to tackle, I'm going to have to do a lot better. A re-think of my tactics will be required, I think.

Season One summary:

Anyway, on to stage two! Presently, the only jobs available are at Stade de Reims and Tours FC. I could go there and try to build them up, but that would take too long I fear. Plus, if I do it and a bigger job becomes available, will my loyalty be too low to be accepted? I'm going to stay put at Juventus and bide my time for now.

Notable screenshots from the season for those who are interested:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

Stage Two to follow soon, For now:

You and me both, Paulo, you and me both...

[danovic78]

Good start, Dybala is the man for this challenge it would seem...

[Jack.Holt]

Currently testing out a 1-2-2-3-1-1 kinda formation in an attempt to dominate games. Positive signs in the first league match of the season:

While waiting for an appropriate job to come up in France it makes sense to me to test out some different tactics to use in the future. After all, I'll be leaving Juventus soon so winning every game isn't really an issue.

Side Note: Is it worth me focusing on a tactic where a smaller number of chances are created but which all fall to my main striker, or should I be creating a dominating tactic where there are lots more chances created but spread out a little? Not sure at the moment which would yield the most goals.

[Jack.Holt]

1 hour ago, danovic78 said:

Good start, Dybala is the man for this challenge it would seem...

It would certainly seem so, although @Taff did pretty well without him!

[BatiGoal]

You're doing great! Stage 1 was a walk in the park. The real challenge begins now

3 hours ago, Jack.Holt said:

Side Note: Is it worth me focusing on a tactic where a smaller number of chances are created but which all fall to my main striker, or should I be creating a dominating tactic where there are lots more chances created but spread out a little? Not sure at the moment which would yield the most goals.

Probably the first one. I was kinda forced to go for option two since my 1KC striker had terrible stamina otherwise I'd be using a "regular" lone striker formation. Goodluck finding a club in France.

[Rjgreeno]

Your 1-2-2-3-1-1 could help you get that final stage done

[Jack.Holt]

14 hours ago, Rjgreeno said:

Your 1-2-2-3-1-1 could help you get that final stage done

It was strangely very tight at the back but the goals soon dried up. Might be worth revisiting at some point though, you're right.

 

18 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

You're doing great! Stage 1 was a walk in the park. The real challenge begins now

Probably the first one. I was kinda forced to go for option two since my 1KC striker had terrible stamina otherwise I'd be using a "regular" lone striker formation. Goodluck finding a club in France.

Good to know - thanks!

[Jack.Holt]

Season Two - Stage One

Stage One might be complete but we're stuck on it until a decent job comes up in France. Patience. I take a quick look at the available jobs early in the season and see this:

Is this normal? Doesn't help me get a job, either!

As I mentioned above, I decided to use the season to mess around with tactics while I waited for a job to come up. The squad didn't change much at all, with Axel Witsel the only signing made and he came in on a free. Dybala remained my main striker and got off to a cracking start:

But this was soon curtailed by injury, and the 1-2-2-3-1-1 tactic I was using quickly stopped gaining such impressive results. The rest of the season was spent testing and avoiding the urge to quickly join a club in France - Marseille and Nice came up at one point, and I was very tempted to complete stage two with Mario Balotelli! Unfortunately the rest of the Nice squad left too much to be desired. Again, patience.

At one point this got me a little excited:

But ultimately he held on to his job, the inconsiderate bugger.

The season finished like this:

Clearly, too many draws. Funnily enough we actually bettered last season's points tally!

So we finish the season still at Juventus, but with the World Cup being held this summer I'm hoping there's a a few changes of job for me to take advantage of.

Watch this space!

Spoiler

The worst penalty shootout ever.

 

[Taff]

Just caught up and you've made a great start dude

Just don't wait to long for that dream French job

[BatiGoal]

Balotelli with Nice could've made for an entertaining read Goodluck cracking it up in Ligue 1 once you land a club.

[Jack.Holt]

Patience rewarded!

[mcandrew003]

Well done getting to France mate!

[Ashez]

Congrats on the move

[Jack.Holt]

16 hours ago, mcandrew003 said:

Well done getting to France mate!

 

16 hours ago, Ashez said:

Congrats on the move

Thanks, guys!

[Rjgreeno]

Good luck in France 

[Jack.Holt]

Season Three: Stage Two

Club chosen: AS Monaco FC

Player chosen: Tim Vester

I join Monaco with 8 league games already played and not single player I'd fancy making 50 goals. I had half a thought of attempting it with Radamel Falcao - he did hit 7 goals in my first 7 games - but once again injury struck so I used the rest of the season building a squad capable of tackling stage two next season.

In January I set about completely overhauling the squad:

A strong, pacy striker with great finishing (retrained to be a forward through-and-through). Here's our man:

I played around with some tactics again, and I'm pretty sure I've found one which will work well for this stage and stage three. Stage four? Hmmmm. Anyway, the season finished like this:

And our man Tim Vester did OK too! Might need to improve that goal output slightly though.

I'm confident that with a full pre-season under his belt and one or two more additions we should be on track to complete stage two next season. Fingers crossed!

Spoiler

 

Is this really what it's called?

 

 

[mcandrew003]

Player looks good mate, good luck!

[Rjgreeno]

Great find with this player have't seem him before should definitely beat the record next season

[BatiGoal]

Another player I haven't seen before. He looks very promising. Can't go wrong with this pairing for stage 2, goodluck!

[Jack.Holt]

Season Four: Stage Two

Season four is upon us, so off we go again!

No major additions (forgot to screenshot anyway) but we bought in Leonardo Bittencourt for a bit of creativity out wide, and Tom Carroll + Olivier Giroud on free transfers to bulk out the squad. (Tom Carroll was a great signing btw!)

Plus this guy was promoted from the youth team. Might not help me much this season, but may cast an eye back on him when I'm setting up a club in Spain for stage four.

I'd encountered issues with Tim Vester's stamina during the second half of last season, so he was placed on a fitness training regime (quick re-read of @BatiGoal's 1K thread helped) in the hope he'd play in at least 50 games, which I thought he'd need to to hit the goal scoring record.

This all become a irrelevant, however, as the injury curse struck again and during the first game of the season he picked up an injury ruling him out for two months!

I had a problem: Do I wait and carry out this stage with Vester when he returns, or do I dive into the transfer market and grab another player capable of completing the challenge? In the end I did neither, as a player already in our squad stepped up. And boy did he step up!

Timo Werner. What a man! He did not stop scoring. The tactic I was using was working very well, and while I knew Werner was a good player, I'd been playing him off of the right wing! (I have him in another save and he plays from the right, too. Not any more!)

Werner's goal scoring did not let up all season, and even when Tim Vester returned to the side (and was fit to play, his stamina even after training is not great) he was forced to play from the left side.

In January I shored up the squad a bit with the signings of Samuel Umtit (£7.5m) and Lucas Vasquez (£14.5m - returning to the side after his successful loan spell) and Timo Werner's goal scoring streak continued unabated.

Form table in and around February:

Coach report (notice he's classified as a right winger!):

And, by March, the record was ours!

The season was a successful one, for Timo Werner himself and the club as a whole. We fell a little short in Europe, but damn we went close. No complaints overall, though.

The season in a nutshell, for club:

And for player:

And that's the record! Stage Two Complete.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with how the season panned out. Not quite as I had planned, but I can't complain! I was a little worried before the season began if 50 goals - and subsquently 57 and 79 goals - was achievable, but now I'm full of confidence ahead of the final two stages. I think I've found a decent tactic to tackle it, but realise now more than ever that the player needs to be top class to reach the figures required. I'm learning as we go along, which should stand me in good stead for the rest of the challenge.

If anyone has any thoughts or would like to add anything, please do.

Now to find a decent job in Portugal...

Finally, a selection of Timo Werner's best exploits for those that way inclined:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Taff]

Great player to have in your squad well done on completing stage 2, now go get that Portugal job

[BatiGoal]

Great return from Timo. That seemed really easy, well done! Can't wait to see how you do in Portugal. Hope you manage to land a decent club.

[Jack.Holt]

Season Five: Stage Two

With stage two complete it's on to stage three... once we find a club in Portugal. With the job centre looking like this as the new season approaches, I'm forced to stay put for now. Patience is required once again.

Still, Timo picked up where he left off.

And by the turn of the year he is officially the best player in the world!

As you read this we're halfway through season five. Club (really sound defensively) and player (still scoring the bulk of our goals) are both doing well again:

But with no (decent) jobs yet to come up in Portugal (you're really looking at FCP or SLB to complete this challenge in good time), patience is once again our best friend.

More to follow soon...