Career Idol Attempts the UK Challenge Take#2

[Idol]

There are no lower divisions, I'm in Wales. Even the NI league looks down on the Welsh league and the English Conference N/S definitely do. Buying foreigners is difficult because of brexit and the fact there's not many internationals down at this level. 

For example, I search the setting you suggest and set shooting to 12 and movement to 12, just to give a little bit of quality. I'm in year 12 which means that anyone 27 and below is very unlikely to be a non-regen so I can ignore those. Setting age to 30+ gives me 8 players. 4 of them are regens, 1 is retiring. That leaves 3, none of whom are better than my current striker, one plays in NI and 2 play in the conference N/S. So back to 27+, there are 10 more players 27-29 and all of them are regens. 

Just to prove a point I'll go back to the 3 that are real pinocchios. 

Aidan Smith in the NI wants £2.9k pw, he is actually half decent in fairness and I've tried to sign him before. 

Lewis Bemrose will sign for me at £1.1k pw but is useless.

Archie Johnson will sign for £525 pw but is also useless. 

It's really difficult. Maybe there's a great player sat down there with 11 movement so I've adjusted that to 10. Maybe 3/4 new real players appeared, none of whom are better than my current striker.

[Idol]

@AndersJ @Brenty92

Sorry if my tone has been a bit negative, I am thankful for the help and ideas. And yeah when I do clear this bugger I'm going to do a dance. I think if I have to do it again I'm going to attack it from a more bent angle. Getting the work permit restrictions lifted and moving money into Wales from Scotland would make this challenge much easier.

[AndersJ]

4 minutes ago, Idol said:

@AndersJ @Brenty92

Sorry if my tone has been a bit negative, I am thankful for the help and ideas. And yeah when I do clear this bugger I'm going to do a dance. I think if I have to do it again I'm going to attack it from a more bent angle. Getting the work permit restrictions lifted and moving money into Wales from Scotland would make this challenge much easier.

Good idea with the money, i did not Think of that

[Brenty92]

Don't worry about it pal we've all been through stupid FMM frustrations so I totally get where you're coming from.

Only problem with pumping money into Wales would be not knowing which team would become available to you and the damn AI would likely spend the lot on 3 35yo goalkeepers lol, keep going dude I have faith!

[Idol]

18 hours ago, Brenty92 said:

Don't worry about it pal we've all been through stupid FMM frustrations so I totally get where you're coming from.

Only problem with pumping money into Wales would be not knowing which team would become available to you and the damn AI would likely spend the lot on 3 35yo goalkeepers lol, keep going dude I have faith!

I was more thinking staying on at the Scottish job until the right Welsh job came up (probably either TNS or Bangor) then arranging transfers quickly and then resigning. It does feel a bit cheat-y to me though... Anyway, let's wrap this show up.

Season 12

Season 12 was a season of transition. I had decided to knuckle down and build that wage budget. I ended up trying about 7 strikers and none of them were any good. 

Euro

A tough group and we got battered, although we gave Groningen some decent games. 

League

A poor total, lack of goals and a lot conceded too. That's the problem with using a formation that concentrates goals to the striker and not having a decent striker!

Summary

We won the Welsh Cup! Finally.

Top Scorer

Well, it ended up being my regen attacking midfielder Wes Myrie-Williams which really just goes to show that average stats and good physicals is all you need to succeed in Wales! 

He was well short of the target and obviously wouldn't have counted if he had got it. Good season from the lad though.

Season 13

Some of the S12 budget building had started to come to fruition, and further building during the season left me with over £2k pw to play with by January for a free transfer. 

I'd picked up a decent striker in the January S12 transfer window, and he played alright for me. 

Joe

Dribbling, shooting, movement, still got a bit of pace stamina and strength and even decent decisions and technique. Could he do the business?

League

Having a settled striker definitely helped our league form, scoring 90 goals and racking up 89 points out of a possible 96. We also only conceded 11 which is pretty impressive.

Summary

Again we won the Welsh Cup, sadly falling on penalties after a 0-0 draw in the Semis of the Nathaniel. 

And the Main Man 

Well, for reasons I'll get into he didn't play much in the 2nd half of the season. He'd scored 25 by the turn of the year and was clearly going to be nowhere near the target and I'd signed someone I wanted to blood into the team ready for one final hurrah next year.

A New Contender! 
 

Spoiler

 

That's right, a name you've actually heard of! OK so he's not a natural striker but he beats any of my other players into a cocked hat. All that work building our finances had finally paid off. 

I wanted to give him a run out at the end of the season. 11 Goals in 8 games gave me some confidence moving into S14, which would surely be the final attempt at Wales as time was running out to get a move to England.

 

 

[Cockers2505]

Looking good @Idol so far, will the Left sided Attacking player get the record for you, that is a Challenge in itself, good luck for Season 14 mate.

[Idol]

Season 14 - Last Chance Saloon

I'm now into my 14thish season in Wales and still haven't scored the required 48 goals. Armed with Alex Iwobi as a converted winger I went in with some confidence.

He still looked very good at 33. 

But of course there are problems with playing older players in such an important role.

 

Spoiler

Between those 2 injuries and the fact that he was still playing for Nigeria and it was an AFCON year led to Alex missing a lot of games. The first 40 games of the season, Alex missed 12 of them and a few of those he did play he only got a few minutes. Obviously when he did play he was awesome but it was asking a lot for him to hit the 48 mark surely?

The Team

At this point Carmarthen were happily the best team in Wales by a country mile. 

A few stupid dropped points but both cups in the bag and only 1 domestic loss all season. Also we qualified for the Champions' League group stages again and we very nearly got through the group as 3rd to drop into the Euros. 

Euros

We'd gone into the final game needing to take an away win against Roma, sadly we fell 30 minutes short of that feat in a well contested game. The stats looked pretty equal until Paletta scored his 2nd and we fell to bits.

We had one or two injury problems

But the Board were pretty happy

And the welsh league is stupid. The 2nd to last league game is on 15th April. The the last league game is on the 3rd of May THREE DAYS before the Cup final. You've had 2 and a half weeks to arrange the bloody thing and you pick 3 days before the cup final?!

And the Main Man. Alex Iwobi. What a kid, he battered goals in for fun, he scored from 2 yards to 32 yards, curled them in from the middle of the park and beat players on the run. 

Sadly it was just too much to ask to score 48 goals in only 41 games. Without those injuries or maybe even the internationals I suspect he'd have got it done but it was not to be.

 

Just out of curiosity I left Carmathen to see where I might have ended up in England if Alex had been successful. 

It could have been good, but it's over now. 

Ho hum. Thanks for reading and commenting and etc. 

So. What next. I'm either going to jump straight back in with lessons learnt or I'm going to try the Germanic challenge, which hopefully will be a little bit easier! 

[Taff]

Unlucky dude, great going getting Iwobi in but a shame about it being a ACON year otherwise I'm sure he would have done it.

I'd go try the Germanic one or the Western Europe one, for now, otherwise I think you'll lose your passion for the game if you have to come back to Wales too soon

Try something else get yourself reinvigorated and come back and strom this Mansfield to bits

[Brenty92]

Unlucky dude, Iwobi ran it close in the end but being a converted winger and lack of games certainly took its toll in the end! 

[BatiGoal]

Agree it's a weird league this one. Tough to see him strand metres before the finishline. Even a failed attempt made for a good read, mate. It's a mere consolation but use the gained experience in your next quest. Looking forward to it.