Career Scratch: Second Chances (DONE) & Armstrong 1KC (DONE)

[Taff]

1 minute ago, BatiGoal said:

Pretty sure your mailbox is going to be filled with death threats from even the least loyal Barca fans. Lock the door and windows, mate.

However you are now the best manager Coventry have ever had and you haven't played a game yet

[Scratch]

13 minutes ago, Taff said:

Coventry City and £900M to spend, this should be good

Well I'm sure enjoying it!  

[Scratch]

10 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

Pretty sure your mailbox is going to be filled with death threats from even the least loyal Barca fans. Lock the door and windows, mate.

It's all good mate, but thanks for your concern. With that sort of money, security can be bought. I'm living on a remote island fortress surrounded by henchmen. Here's a snapshot of me chillin in my crib, not a care in the world...

[Scratch]

15 minutes ago, Taff said:

However you are now the best manager Coventry have ever had and you haven't played a game yet

Well, I haven't won anything with them (yet). I'm tempted to scrap this challenge and take them to the Champions League!!

[Mr.Manager]

£900m. Good god.

[Taff]

1 minute ago, scratch99 said:

Well, I haven't won anything with them (yet). I'm tempted to scrap this challenge and take them to the Champions League!!

With £900M you should be able to take them to the World Cup

[Scratch]

Wow, I really dodged a bullet without realising it!! In the update, I wrote this about having to set up the transfers and move before they'd gone through:

Quote

In fact, there could be advantages to doing it this way, as then I'll be in total control of the money instead of relying on the board to give me some of it. 

Well, I just did a test (using Chelsea on a new save):

So they kept the £130M I sent them and only gave me £925K to spend. Imagine if I'd lost £1Billion!!

 

[Scratch]

5 minutes ago, Mr.Manager said:

£900m. Good god.

It's actually more because they honoured all the transfers (9 * 150M) instead of just the 6 they could afford. If there was a human manager there, the transfers they couldn't afford would have been cancelled, but not with a computer manager apparently...

[Scratch]

6 minutes ago, Taff said:

With £900M you should be able to take them to the World Cup

I guess so. I'll declare this island fortress as a country and we'll enter!

[Mr.Manager]

4 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Wow, I really dodged a bullet without realising it!! In the update, I wrote this about having to set up the transfers and move before they'd gone through:

Well, I just did a test (using Chelsea on a new save):

So they kept the £130M I sent them and only gave me £925K to spend. Imagine if I'd lost £1Billion!!

 

Yep! I've just encountered this very thing in my career! Crazy huh? One thing I'm not sure on, why did you quit Barcelona first, instead of just swapping clubs?

[Mr.Manager]

3 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

It's actually more because they honoured all the transfers (9 * 150M) instead of just the 6 they could afford. If there was a human manager there, the transfers they couldn't afford would have been cancelled, but not with a computer manager apparently...

Really?! Does this always work? Does this mean you could give teams an infinite amount of money (well, £150m x however many players are in the squad)?

[Scratch]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Manager said:

Yep! I've just encountered this very thing in my career! Crazy huh? One thing I'm not sure on, why did you quit Barcelona first, instead of just swapping clubs?

So glad I didn't find out the hard way!

I thought I'd resign first because a) @Ashez is doing it in his career where he resigns after a loss and it has meant his Loyalty value didn't go down; and b) it's been shown in @BatiGoal 's UK challenge that it is easier to move if you are unemployed - not that I should have any problem (being World Class), but I'm not taking any risks!!

[Scratch]

8 minutes ago, Mr.Manager said:

Really?! Does this always work? Does this mean you could give teams an infinite amount of money (well, £150m x however many players are in the squad)?

It certainly worked this time and I seem to remember it several years ago (but I had forgotten it). In fact I didn't need to save up £900M, just £150M would have been enough because then I can set up as many £150M transfers as I like. Of course doesn't work if I'm still at the selling club, only if it's a computer manager by then.

[Scratch]

Hmm, just tested again, trying more transfers (about 10). Only 6 went through, but I resigned before they were finalised, so not sure why only 6. But then again 6 did go through, each of them at £134M which was the maximum Chelsea allow. Obviously only 1 should have been allowed. Tamworth now has £806M and they generously gave me £925K for transfers. 

Spoiler

 

 

[Ashez]

Really enjoyed catching up with this, so much to take in and theorise about. Sad to see the gifting money approach didn't work but as I said before the game acts funny with the money it has. 

Like if you are Madrid and buy loads from Barca they'll go on a massive spending spree. I've managed to say sell Bale to Barca early, buy Neymar then Barca will come in for Ronaldo and so on. 

[Scratch]

2 minutes ago, Ashez said:

Really enjoyed catching up with this, so much to take in and theorise about. Sad to see the gifting money approach didn't work but as I said before the game acts funny with the money it has. 

Like if you are Madrid and buy loads from Barca they'll go on a massive spending spree. I've managed to say sell Bale to Barca early, buy Neymar then Barca will come in for Ronaldo and so on. 

Thanks mate. Yep you were right about that!  

I was thinking I'd take your approach of jumping around from club to club. I'd rock up, buy a dozen hot young stars and then move on again. But the newly discovered fact that the clubs won't give me the full budget when I arrive will kill that idea.... I guess twice a year is the most often I can move if I want to take the money with me...

[Ashez]

Yeah, it's an odd one. I'll have a think and see if I can come up with any "short cuts". 

[mcandrew003]

Jeez, how much money?! Nice work mate, can see you progressing quickly!

[veerus]

Sounds like a pretty nasty bug you've uncovered even though you did try to do it legitly.  I assume there's a rule not to abuse bugs in these challenges?  

In either case - it is absolutely genius!  Kudos to you, man.  You've not only injected $1.2B into the club, but that's really $1.2B into the EPL pyramid in general since that's the only country that will have lower level players.

Sounds like the designers put in controls to avoid this from happening (with the clubs pocketing the transfer money) but you clearly found a nice workaround.

[Scratch]

9 hours ago, mcandrew003 said:

Jeez, how much money?! Nice work mate, can see you progressing quickly!

Thanks mate, but the question is whether I can spend that money wisely or whether I will blow it all on pet projects, like buying a certain striker who cost more than was sensible:

Spoiler

 

[Scratch]

31 minutes ago, veerus said:

Sounds like a pretty nasty bug you've uncovered even though you did try to do it legitly.  I assume there's a rule not to abuse bugs in these challenges?  

In either case - it is absolutely genius!  Kudos to you, man.  You've not only injected $1.2B into the club, but that's really $1.2B into the EPL pyramid in general since that's the only country that will have lower level players.

Sounds like the designers put in controls to avoid this from happening (with the clubs pocketing the transfer money) but you clearly found a nice workaround.

Thanks mate. I'm not sure whether there is an actual rule not to abuse bugs. I guess it depends on the bug - if it's something in the match engine, I think that's pretty much unenforceable and well you take the good with the bad, but certainly this is a license to print money, which shouldn't be allowed. So I need to give £300M back LOL! 

Yeah, I'm a real Robin Hood character I am. They love me in England. The Spanish aren't quite so keen on me though (well the Real Madrid fans are!).  

I spent an hour or two last night testing out whether it was possible to sign for a big club and use this to transfer billions to another club, then jump to them right away, but I couldn't make it happen. Even a VNS club wouldn't give me a job while I was still at Chelsea. I had to resign first. But that meant the transfers had already gone through by the time I got there, and the board of directors all had new yachts, but I had a pittance to spend...

But really, the AI should be cancelling transfers once the transfer budget has been spent, just like it does if a human is in charge of the club.

[veerus]

Sounds like the devs already foresaw many of the edge cases on this potential abuse.  Feels like a good time to ping the powers that be to fix this one too for next year.  @Alari @Marc Vaughan

[Mr.Manager]

Haha great to see you link up with that particular striker again! I'm looking forward to seeing how many millions you squandered on him in the next update....!

[Scratch]

6 hours ago, veerus said:

Sounds like the devs already foresaw many of the edge cases on this potential abuse.  Feels like a good time to ping the powers that be to fix this one too for next year.  @Alari @Marc Vaughan

Probably a good idea to report it!

@Alari @Marc Vaughan To save you from scrolling through things to find the problem, essentially it is that if a club has a transfer limit of say £100M pounds, and 10 individual transfers are arranged for £100M, then the AI won't prevent them from going through if a human manager is NOT in charge.

If a human manager is in charge, the first transfer will go through and the rest will be cancelled as the club won't have enough funds. But if the human manager has left the club after arranging the transfers, the AI will process them all (ie spending £1Billion even though the limit was £100M).

[Scratch]

42 minutes ago, Mr.Manager said:

Haha great to see you link up with that particular striker again! I'm looking forward to seeing how many millions you squandered on him in the next update....!

Couldn't resist. He was somewhere in the region of £20M, for which I could gotten a better striker or several really good strikers for this level. But you, know if you got the money, it's hard not to spend it.

[Scratch]

Update - Season 2 - Coventry

Warning: this update is loooooong!

 

After saying goodbye to Barcelona, I took a short flight to Stansted and a bus up to Coventry. League 2 is a far cry from La Liga. Or at least it is until my £1Billion arrives in January. Until then we going to have to do it tough.

 

 

Taking Stock

 

After arriving at the ground and settling into my small office, I took stock of where we were.

 

We'd slipped to the bottom of the table:

 

after a truly horrible run:

 

Not looking good. Next I met the players and took my first training session. They were nice lads, but Messi and Neymar they were not. That was to be expected of course, but this lot were ... awful. 

 

There are some managers who can get the best out of any squad, the sort who could take this lot, work on the tactics and lead them to the title from here. Sadly, I'm not one of them. I'm okay tactically, but not good enough to work miracles like that. I'm a wheeler dealer who needs to build a squad and bring in the right players to support the way I want to play.

 

I would be able to do that to my heart's content soon. But first there were 13 tricky games to get through. 

 

 

A Difficult Few Months

 

As I predicted, it was real struggle making it through to the New Year.

 

We had some good results, but some bad ones too:

 

as we worked our way out to just outside the relegation zone (next screenshot is from after a big win with some new signings, we were 22nd before that):

 

Somehow I really got the tactics wrong against fellow second chance team Oldham and they beat us 11-0:

 

Anyway, we battled on, waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

 

 

Late Christmas Presents

 

On the morning of January 4th, I woke to find a late Christmas present under the tree:

 

I won't rehash everything in the posts above, but I'd set up 9 transfers instead of 6 to cover any of the players being injured (which would have meant that transfer being canceled). As it happens, they were all fit and due to a bug, all 9 transfers went through even though Barcelona couldn't really afford it. Poor, bankrupt fools:

 

Meanwhile, at Coventry, we suddenly find we have some money to spend! 

 

Post Christmas sales anyone?

 

 

Rebuilding

 

My strategy was to target players who would allow us dominate this league, but at the same time, I didn't want to spend too much. This money is going to have to last for years if my plan is to work out. Ideally I was looking for players at Championship level, who were available for around £5M.

 

I started with interested players who were transfer listed, but to be honest, I went a little crazy and when I got home I couldn't remember where I'd bought all of these:

 

Some pretty good players on there, especially for this level. I'm not sure I'd buy Zaha at higher levels, but in Division 2? Winning... 

 

I'd never heard of quite a few of them, but they all looked pretty good. For example, I'd never heard of Seabra (sorry Benfica fans), but he looks really nice (and certainly a cut above the average Division 2 player):

 

There were disappointments in the transfer market of course (and more than just these two):

 

 

Still, all in all, I have to be happy with our signings!

 

 

An Old Friend

 

The biggest signing was Adam Armstrong for £21M. He'd only cost me £1.8M during my 1KC with him (at Celtic), so £21M was a shock. He was way over the budget I set myself, but... I just couldn't help myself. He's still young and a little inconsistent, but I know him well enough to know he'll cut this league up. 

 

To top things off, he wasn't unknown to Coventry fans, scoring the first 20 goals of his career here:

 

It seemed like a match made in Heaven. And so it was. He signed in late January and this was his first match:

 

And this was his form:

 

He finished with 28 goals in 16 games and only has 972 goals to go to reach the 1K again... 

 

Yes, he might be coming with me on my travels, if he's willing... We'll see.

 

 

Charity

 

They say charity begins at home, but with that part sorted, we kept an eye out for other second chance teams to help. The problem however is that they are very picky about which players they will take in an exchange. I can only hope this will change as I get a bigger squad (with more fringe players). In the end, I could only help 3 teams: Oldham in Division 2, MK Dons in Division 1 and Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship. 

 

 

 

I'm really going to have to ramp this up next year.

 

 

Job Opportunities

 

The Oldham job became free in the middle of January. Having already kitted out the Coventry team during that 2 weeks spending spree, I was tempted to leave them to their own devices, confident that they'd go up next year, and jump over to Oldham who were mid-table in Division 2. I'd have two weeks remaining in the transfer window to upgrade their team and they weren't far off the playoff spots...

 

But... There was no way to get the money over while the window was open (the board would keep all the money to themselves). And my job with Coventry was not yet done. 

 

 

The Run Home

 

We were just above the relegation places, but I was eying promotion. Crazy? Maybe... But we had a great team and I thought we were ripe to run all the way through Division 2. At least we were going to give it our best shot!

 

Spoiler

 

A series of wins moved us up the table slowly, but we were still in 14th with 9 games to go. 

 

It was looking difficult, but we were only 8 points behind a play off position. We just needed to keep going out and winning.

 

With 4 games to go, we were in 11th and only 2 points off the playoffs. With our current form (winning every game), I was hopeful we'd get a playoff place, but automatic promotion looked too far away at 8 points and 17 goals behind.  

 

With 2 games to go, we'd moved into the playoff positions, but competition was fierce. We couldn't afford to stumble now, we had to keep winning. To get automatic promotion, we'd need to win the two remaining games (no problem) and rely on Notts County losing both their games (problem). Oh and there were another 3 teams between us and Notts County anyway. 

 

Notts County did us a favour and lost their next game, leaving the situation like this going into the last weekend: 

 

If we won and Notts County lost (or drew if we made up 4 goals on them) and Leyton Orient drew or lost, then we'd claim the final automatic promotion spot. Our form had been like this (so I was pretty confident that's we'd win):

 

But Leyton Orient was at home to the 11th place team and Notts County were playing a team that had already been relegated. Surely this wasn't going to happen?  

 

We were away to fellow second chance team Oldham and we weren't going to be able to take it easy on them this time. We started well, going 2-0 up within 13 minutes, which put us level with Notts County but 2 goals behind them. The challenge: score at least 3 more goals!

 

By half time, we were 3-0 up, but everything had changed. Notts County had gone a goal down, so we'd leapfrogged them, but Leyton Orient had gone ahead in their game and leapfrogged us. We're good, but making up another 11 goals just wasn't going to happen...  

 

But by the 67th minute, Crawley had equalised against Leyton Orient and Notts County were still behind:

 

That left the table like this:

 

The final 30 minutes were nerve racking... In the 79th minute, Leyton Orient let in another goal to go behind and drop out of the race (barring 2 late goals). But if Notts County equalised, they'd be level on goal difference with us, and who know who would go through then. But in the 88th minute, Morecambe put the nail in their coffin!

 

Promotion!!!!

 

 

 

What a run... Now scuse me while I have a little lie down...

 

 

The Squad

 

These guys will be remembered as legends of the club:

 

 

 

League Tables

 

Here's the top and bottom of all the English leagues:

 

Spoiler

 

Arsenal won the Premier League, ticking off another past winner.

 

In the Championship, Norwich, QPR and Fulham were all promoted to the Premier League, ticking off three more clubs from the list, but Charlton, Bolton and Sheffield Wednesday were all relegated.

 

In League 1, Barnsley, Sheffield United and MK Dons were all promoted, with no second chance teams being relegated.

 

In League 2, Blackpool and Coventry went, but Oldham remain in the division for next year, along with AFC Wimbledon.   

 

Past Winners

Spoiler

 

• Manchester United
• Arsenal
• Chelsea
• Manchester City
• Blackburn Rovers
• Leicester City

 

 

Completed (5)

Spoiler

 

• Derby County
• Fulham
• Newcastle United
• Norwich City
• QPR

 

 

Remaining (22)

 

Spoiler

 

Championship (13)

• Aston Villa
• Barnsley
• Birmingham City
• Blackburn Rovers
• Cardiff City
• Ipswich Town
• Leeds United
• MK Dons
• Nottingham Forest
• Reading
• Sheffield United
• Wigan Athletic
• Wolves

 

League 1 (8)

• Bolton Wanderers
• Blackpool
• Bradford City
• Charlton Athletic
• Coventry City
• Portsmouth
• Sheffield Wednesday
• Swindon Town

 

League 2 (1)

• Oldham Athletic
• AFC Wimbledon

 

 

Looking Ahead

 

We'll be back next year, with three specific targets:

1. Promotion again for Coventry
2. Getting Oldham Athletic out of League 2 by pulling some strings
3. 100 goals for Armstrong

Fancy my chances? Or am I going to crash and burn?

 

 

[BatiGoal]

Didn't you get the "updates shouldn't last more than 30min" memo?

Some run with the Sky Blues -I call them Coves- lol when things click there's simply no remedie against it

I do think however you're going to crash..then burn..then stand up and shake off the ashes of your suit and walk to the finishline.

[Scratch]

17 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

Didn't you get the "updates shouldn't last more than 30min" memo?

Some run with the Sky Blues -I call them Coves- lol when things click there's simply no remedie against it

I do think however you're going to crash..then burn..then stand up and shake off the ashes of your suit and walk to the finishline.

Yeah, and I said in the original post that I was going to keep this lite... Well, there was enough drama this season to warrant a longer post (and I'm a sucker for it!).

As for the run, when you're just that much better than any other team, there's just no stopping you. It'll be the same in Division 1 too if I've got things right...

Yeah, crashing and burning is definitely on the cards alright. I've given Oldham 5 quality players now, but will it be enough? Armstrong has 5 goals from 2 games in season 3, but can he keep it up AND stay injury free? Who knows... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jens]

Really interesting to follow, you little cheater

Incidentally, this could be the answer to my 1K midfielder challenge, without cheating with an editor...

[mcandrew003]

Another top-notch year mate, enjoyed the long Update aswell. Congrats on the promotion, I think you are 1 team ahead of me now, but I'm so addicted to this save so the race is on 

Some quality transfers in there aswell bud, seems that amount of money has really helped you out. Looking forward to the next one!