Career Foxy Presents: Double Trouble in Barcelona - Season Seven

[FuddledFox]

 

I felt it was time to get started with my first challenge of FMM18. I am taking on the Double Trouble challenge with Barcelona and more details on the challenge can be found here. I love a good old fashioned double act up front so this was the challenge I really wanted to try on this years game. As for my choice of Barca, well for one thing they start with a shed load of money but they are also a club that I really like with one of my first FM saves being with them 20 years ago.

So who are the players I have picked for this challenge? I wanted two players from the same nation to give me a chance of international management as well. I decided to stick to my home nation so hopefully Southgate will get the heave-ho at some point unlike in @samhardy 1kc. I also wanted to try and get the players to complement each other so they were a classic partnership.

Marcus Rashford

It had to be the golden boy of both Manchester United and hopefully England at next year’s World Cup. He didn’t come cheap at a cool £100m but at 19 he already looks a great player and I’m convinced he will get a lot of goals and be the main man in my front 2. He does lack strength and aerial ability though so his partner needed to have those attributes.

 

Keinan Davis

The Aston Villa youngster is probably a surprise choice but some times I like to try something different. He was brought to my attention in @Stam Wonderkids list and I decided I wanted to give him a go. A couple of other players I considered where of course Harry Kane but he was simply too expensive at over £150m and I felt a little to old at 24 and also Tammy Abraham. Unsurprisingly Keinan was substantially cheaper than Rashford at only £7.5m and I do expect Marcus to be the main goalscorer on this partnership with Davis backing up with a good few as well. Looking at his stats you can see that he has strength and aerial ability and I will be looking for them to grow over time, his shooting isn’t bad either. With the top class facilities and coaches at Barcelona I’m sure he will improve and as we know he has decent potential because he is on the wonderkids list.

  

 FYI: This screenshot isn't from the Barca save as I forgot to take one when I started. Just in case you wonder why I'm managing Manchester City.

So those are my lads that I will be using to try and to that magic total of 1200 goals combined. I hope you guys will wish me well and encourage me on this journey. I hope to have fairly regular updates but I always have plenty going on so this challenge may take some time. Also thanks to @PriZe for his unique style of motivation when I was discussing this with him. Which mainly involved him telling me how great him and Isak are

Thank you for reading.

[Taff]

Good luck dude, and it's nice to see some unknown talent get a shout here, lets hope they can do the job for you

[PriZe]

Isak send his blessing  Good to see this posted! Double trouble is where it is people! Good luck!!

[Rjgreeno]

Good luck with this challenge. It will be interesting to see how Davis gets on

[samhardy]

Really hope this goes substantially better than that Abraham 1KC 100 goals in 5 seasons was it?

[BatiGoal]

Nice partnership. Like that you went for one surprise pick. Don't count on the ITN job tho but don't think you'll even need it tbh. Goodluck! 

[Ashez]

Good luck mate! 

[danovic78]

Good luck, nice Big Man, Fast Man combination.

I hope you can improve Davis' technique as I have noticed it seems to be make a bigger difference between strikers this season.

[FuddledFox]

Thanks for the support lads. I hope I can get season 1 posted over the weekend

43 minutes ago, danovic78 said:

Good luck, nice Big Man, Fast Man combination.

I hope you can improve Davis' technique as I have noticed it seems to be make a bigger difference between strikers this season.

I hope I can improve a lot of aspects of Davis' game as I don't want to rely to heavily on Rashford for the goals. By my maths I need between 80 and 100+ goals combined per season to reach the target.

[danovic78]

9 minutes ago, FuddledFox said:

Thanks for the support lads. I hope I can get season 1 posted over the weekend

I hope I can improve a lot of aspects of Davis' game as I don't want to rely to heavily on Rashford for the goals. By my maths I need between 80 and 100+ goals combined per season to reach the target.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I did it with two English players at Celtic a few seasons ago...without any INT goals too!

[FuddledFox]

Season 1

I’m going to try and keep these updates short and sweet as their could be 15 or more of them!

I decided to keep Messi and Saurez because lets face it they aren’t bad back ups and I didn’t want to burn Rashford and Davies out as they are still teenagers. Unfortunately I forgot to screenshot the transfers in and out but my in’s where:

Marcus Rashford £100m ST

Kostas Manolas £36.5m CB

Dayot Upamecano £25m CB

Keinan Davis £7.5m ST

 

Competitions

Super Cup

 

We scrapped past Real Madrid to lift our first trophy with Rashford getting his first goal for the club.

Spanish Cup

 

Trophy number two in the cabinet with a 2-0 win over Deportivo Coruna.

League

 

Real pushed us close but we lifted the league with a couple of games to spare.

Champion League

  

Gutted to lose in the quarters versus our biggest rivals.

RADA

So to the main event and how did Rashford and Davis get on.

 

I expect him to be the main goalscorer out of the pair of them and so it proved this season with 63 goals. Davis didn’t fair so well as he tried to settle in at the Catalan giants. He started the season unhappy with IT although I soon cleared that but the biggest problem was injuryies in the first half of the season.

 

As you can see he missed 16 weeks of the season through injury and of course more games as he returned to fitness as well. I was worried he may be injury prone but my coaches don’t seem to think he is and he enjoyed an injury free end to the season. What he did show me is that when he was fit and played he did score goals with 17 in 28 appearances and a decent AvR as well.   

So that’s the first season done and a total of 80 goals in a decent start. I consider 80 goals as the minimum I want to see RADA scoring between them as at that rate it would take 15 seasons to reach the 1200 needed. I hope we can start moving towards 100 goals a year next season.

Season two will see me continue to rebuild what is starting to be an ageing squad in some key positions.

Thank you for reading.

[Taff]

Good first season dude looking forward to seeing the squad develop as well as the continued progress of RADA

KIU FOXY

[BatiGoal]

Always tough when injuries get in the way of bigger totals so 80 is good for a starter. No doubt 100+ should be the aim. You got this, Fox. 

Come on, RaDa!! 

[samhardy]

Good first season mate. Still plenty of time for it to come crashing down so I'm not giving up hope yet.

[FuddledFox]

22 hours ago, Taff said:

Good first season dude looking forward to seeing the squad develop as well as the continued progress of RADA

KIU FOXY

 

10 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Always tough when injuries get in the way of bigger totals so 80 is good for a starter. No doubt 100+ should be the aim. You got this, Fox. 

Come on, RaDa!! 

Thanks lads. 100+ is definitely the aim over next couple of seasons.

52 minutes ago, samhardy said:

Good first season mate. Still plenty of time for it to come crashing down so I'm not giving up hope yet.

I know you love me really Sam

[FuddledFox]

 

I headed into season 2 with questions about Keinan Davis’s fitness still needing to be answered after his injury hit first season. I really feel that if he can stay fit he will get goals for us.

Transfers

I said at the end of season 1 that I would be looking to start the rebuild of the squad with some younger talent and the 5 players I brought in did just that. I also streamlined what was becoming a very large squad by letting 10 first team players leave.

 I wanted to strengthen in the FB/WB areas and Henrichs and Guerreiro joined us for a combined £122m from Dortmund and are both players who should fill those positions for the next 10 seasons. The centre of midfield was boosted with the addition of Goretzka on a free who will likely play BBM and DLP Diawara for £42m. Columbian right back Darwin Franco joined from Argentinian club Millonarios but is only 16 so it maybe a season or 2 before he starts to feature in the first team.

 

The majority of the players who left wanted to go for more first team football or would simply be surplus to requirements. I decided to keep Luis Suarez and Messi for another year as neither seemed to mind being understudies to RaDa. 

 

Competitions

In season 1 we won the domestic double but fell at the quarter final stage in the Champions League.

The Spanish Super Cup proved a good warm up for the start of the season with a comfortable 6-0 aggregate win.

 

 

We lifted the Spanish Cup again in a tense final against Sevilla, with a Rashford goal the difference between the two teams despite Sevilla being down to 10 men for much of the game.

 

We went the entire La Liga season undefeated to retain our league title. Only 15 goals conceded wasn’t too shabby either considering we go out and attack every game.

 

I finished this season a few weeks ago and it seems I didn’t get very many screenshots from the the Champions League. We performed much better this year in as we got to the final versus Manchester United. We went 2-0 up before a brace from James Wilson forced extra time. The game and trophy was won with a goal each from RaDa.

 

 

RaDa

A very successful season trophy wise but how did my two lads up front get on?

 

 

It looks like Davis put his injury problems behind him this season as he played 46 games. Rashford was more disappointing than season 1 as he scored 11 goals less in 48 games. This gave us a total of 81 goals for the season but we need more than that. I need them both to improve if we are going to hit the 100 goal a season mark.

Player Stats

 

Spoiler

 

Thank you for reading.

[BatiGoal]

Davies needs to pick it up. Tell him  let's hope his experience and better team players pushes him to the 50-goal mark next season. KIU mate! 

[Titjes]

Going good, keep it @FestiveFox

[veerus]

Wow 36 assists between the pair. Maybe you should start keeping track of those for the secondary objective. 

[PriZe]

50 minutes ago, veerus said:

Wow 36 assists between the pair. Maybe you should start keeping track of those for the secondary objective. 

This! 

An improvement in total but this is a tough one  keep it up Foxy!

[FuddledFox]

1 hour ago, veerus said:

Wow 36 assists between the pair. Maybe you should start keeping track of those for the secondary objective. 

 

19 minutes ago, PriZe said:

This! 

An improvement in total but this is a tough one  keep it up Foxy!

You guys have just given me something else to worry about now ??

Thanks for the support lads.

[veerus]

What tactic are you using? Messi & Co seem to be stealing a lot of goals from your magic pair. 

[samhardy]

Oh dear! Surely not another disastrous goal challenge from Foxy!!

[FuddledFox]

4 hours ago, veerus said:

What tactic are you using? Messi & Co seem to be stealing a lot of goals from your magic pair. 

It was a 442 narrow diamond for most of that season. Suarez, Dembele and Messi played either super sub roles or played to give RaDa a rest. Messi also had to play a few games as an AP to cover injuries which is why he played a lot more than Suarez.

[Ashez]

Slow and steady mate......?

[FuddledFox]

 

                                 

 

Last season we had the major positive that it looks like Keinan had put his first season injury problems behind him. The major negative was that we only improved on our first season goal tally by 1 goal with a total of 81. Rashford was less prolific than the first season and although Davis played more and scored more goals he only just made up the difference.

Transfers

I had two CBs leave in the summer in the shape of Umtiti and Pique but they where easily replaced by Jose Gimenez and Caglar Soyuncu. I had plenty of money to spend and went a little mad with the signings of Coman and De Bruyne as I looked to bring in more creative players and Coman gave me the option along with Dembele to play with wingers so I could mix it up a little. I also added DLP Burnic and AP Amiri to provide numbers in the squad.

 

Competitions

We won all four trophies available to us last season and never lost a game in the league. This year we could add the European Super Cup and the World Club Cup to the trophy cabinet as well.

 

We made light work of the Spanish Super Cup in the end despite losing the first leg.

 

 

We added the European Super Cup as well.

 

The Spanish Cup was won for the third year in a row.

 

As was our third La Liga title despite losing twice this season. More points and one less goal conceded than last year but eleven less goals scored.

We easily won the Club World Cup but I would have liked a few more goals against the New Zealanders in the semi-finals.

 

The season was finished off with the Champions League final versus PSG. It was a similar story to last year with a 2-0 lead thrown away and having to win it in extra time. The extra time did give Davis a chance to score his final goal of the season and we survived the scare of having Manolas suspiciously sent off. I do wonder how that sending off would be received in real life as Manolas had already agreed to sign for PSG before this game and only played due to suspensions and injury.

 

RaDa

 

 

We improve our total again as the pair got 90 goals between them. There is no kind way to put it but Rashford really pissed me off this season as he missed so many 1 on 1 chances by putting them straight at the ‘keeper. You can see he played less well this year as his AvR dropped from 8.33 in season 2 to 7.71 this season.

Davis was almost matching Rashford for goals until he picked up an injury at the end of February. As we all know 3 weeks is just how long he was out of training and it was more like 5 weeks before he was back fit enough to play. At this point Davis had 29 goals and Rashford 32 but once Davis came back he didn’t quite hit the same form.

RaDa Season Assists (career).

Rashford – 18 (45)

Davis – 21 (45)

Side Challenge total – 90/600

Last season I forgot to screenshot the players attributes but this year I have remembered. I will put what they looked like at the start of the save under a spoiler if you are interested to see how they have developed. You will see that Rashford has developed very well but Davis not so much. I’m especially disappointed that his aerial ability hasn’t gone up at all as I hoped he would provide the headed goals which Rashford is unlikely to get. That being said he is getting goals and wouldn’t have been much behind Rashford total if injury hadn’t stalled his season.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

He did make the world team of the year alongside Rashford though.

 

Other news and player stats

Just after Christmas Ineista announced his retirement at the end of the season so I offered him the chance to join the coaching team once the season had ended, which he accepted. A couple of weeks later he had a change of heart and accepted an offer to move to Nurnburg at the end of his contract. I did offer him a one year deal to stay but he wasn’t interested.

 

Dembele and De Bruyne where the biggest stealers of goals. I do use Dembele as a backup striker when I need to rest RaDa but when I had him out wide him and Coman were pinching too many goals so I abandoned using wingers quite quickly into the season. I also moved De Bruyne back into a CM position as in the AM strata he too was scoring too many.

 

 Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

  

[BatiGoal]

Nice touch giving Iniesta a role in the coaching staff. Have you contacted Xavi yet? ? going great so far. KIU Fox! 

[Taff]

going good Foxy, won't be long and you'll have is sussed and be banging in 300 a season 

[zxLv]

On 12/28/2017 at 07:06, FuddledFox said:

It was a 442 narrow diamond for most of that season. Suarez, Dembele and Messi played either super sub roles or played to give RaDa a rest. Messi also had to play a few games as an AP to cover injuries which is why he played a lot more than Suarez.

Hi FuddledFox - great write-up! Mind sharing the full details of your tactics? I like the looks of it (from the stats of your players and the subs). Cheers!

[FuddledFox]

17 hours ago, zxLv said:

Hi FuddledFox - great write-up! Mind sharing the full details of your tactics? I like the looks of it (from the stats of your players and the subs). Cheers!

Thanks.

To be honest when I have a tactic I think is worth sharing I will. The problem is that I have a very good team having a net transfer spend of £400m+ during this save. I don't think I have a killer tactic, more a killer squad with a solid tactic. If that makes sense