Career Scratch Tries: A Long Way To The Top [Complete]

[Gunners Rishi]

I know, I they beat Liverpool didn't they? Their keeper saved a pen and they scores from a corner and the keeper's name was Beasant 

Spoiler

I didn't even have to Google that! 

What I am saying is that it would be nice to see Macclesfield win something! The magic of the cup is amazing still! 

[FMMPlayer18]

Good Luck mate

[Scratch]

15 hours ago, Rob2017 said:

Great first career choice and as always best of luck. 

Thanks mate, yeah seems like a good one first up. Mind you, I'm having to squash down 1KC ideas already! 🙂

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14 hours ago, Aaron55 said:

Good luck! 

Thanks mate!

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, Foxy said:

If you went to Eastleigh I expect big things from you and James Constable 

Good luck mate.

Eastleigh mate? I've got a Macclesfield screenshot up yonder! 😂

They had an Oxford player on loan (I've forgotten who! 😮) but I ended the loan as I was paying the salary and had players to bring in...

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, Gunners Rishi said:

Good luck @Scratch, but how about you win the FA Cup with Macclesfield! Replicate the Crazy Gang! 

Thanks mate! Not sure about winning the FA Cup. Things looks a little harder this year. I'd be happy with a promotion playoff push as the team comes together. The board were expecting us to battle relegation but I've totally transformed the team - might take the youngsters a while to blossom. 

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13 hours ago, FMMPlayer18 said:

Good Luck mate

Thanks mate!

[FuddledFox]

10 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Eastleigh mate? I've got a Macclesfield screenshot up yonder! 😂

They had an Oxford player on loan (I've forgotten who! 😮) but I ended the loan as I was paying the salary and had players to bring in...

That wasn’t an official update so I didn’t notice 😡

[Nucleus]

20 minutes ago, Foxy said:

That wasn’t an official update so I didn’t notice 😡

I didn’t notice either! Hence the Wimbledon comment a few posts up! My bad 🙁

[Scratch]

@Foxy @Nucleus - Tempted to feign moral indignation that you don't pore over my every word! But I'll admit I do the same sometimes - not with either of your careers of course (I'm keeping the moral superiority now I've got it, thanks very much!). 

[Scratch]

Season 1 - Pre-season

 

In the last official update, I said I'd applied for all the available jobs but left it as a mystery which one I took. It was one of these:

I very cleverly concealed the answer in the non official updates above, but here is it officially:

Macclesfield Town! They offered me the job and of course I said yes. I was expecting a VNL team at best, so I jumped at the chance to go straight to League 2, even if they were expecting a relegation battle:

When I tested this challenge out in FMM18, there was no possible way you could get a L2 job with a reputation of Unknown (VNL was the best you could hope for), but FMM19 seems a little more lenient. For the record, here's proof I'm still Unknown:

The fans were skeptical at first, until they heard I was from Vibe - though they were slightly disappointed when they found out I wasn't @BatiGoal or @PriZe. They must have something for Dutchies, I guess. I decided to appoint a Dutch Assistant Manager (some guy called Bergkamp or something), which seemed to satisfy them.

As mentioned above, we're looking at a relegation battle. Well, the board are. I'm thinking we can push for promotion (but I'm not telling them that!). We're not in the best shape however:

And we're lacking depth:

Of course anyone who has seen any of my careers is probably familiar with my habit of totally overhauling the squad. Looks like it's especially needed in this case. So, here's what I did:

First I shipped out a bunch of players. I was planning on bringing a bunch of players in, so needed to free up as much of the wage bill as possible (as well as some squad space). I also sold a bunch of players in the Reserves that I didn't think would make it. I only got £6K each, but that adds up at this level. Slough was in a buying mood, which helped.

I kept a solid core bunch of players and a few from the Reserves that I thought had promise. My main criteria was the difference between CA and PA as shown by my staff or a training message that the player has potential. My staff can't really tell how good a player is (they're a bit useless to be honest), but they often know whether a player has development left in them.

After that, I headed to the both the loan market and free agent market. This is what I got:

Remi Streete was obviously the headline here, but we got a few ready players and a bunch with a lot of potential. We should be better than we would have been this year, but some of these might not blossom for a year or two.

Our depth is a lot better than it was, but still not perfect, and I seem to have removed the one bit of green we used to have (AMR):

And the same could be said for our summary:

Can I meld this team into a promotion chasing side? Good question! Time will tell.

We'll be playing 4 3 2 1 Long Ball, which I found works well in the lower leagues, courtesy of my time at Queens Park in Scotland during the CC. If you want to see how well it works, check out this post with some of the goals we've scored (mind you we keep conceding equalisers at the last minute):

https://fmmvibe.com/forums/topic/42437-lower-league-long-ball-goals/

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Edited November 5, 2018 by Scratch

[Cockers2505]

Good luck mate, get these promote to League 1 after one season and then get a job straight into the Prem, have this finished in 3 seasons 😂😉

[Scratch]

12 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Good luck mate, get these promote to League 1 after one season and then get a job straight into the Prem, have this finished in 3 seasons 😂😉

Thanks mate! I'm in and around the playoff spots in mid Jan, but history tells me I'm likely to dip in the run in, so it's anyone's guess whether I'll get promoted this year. I might be looking at 10 years! LOL. 

I keep looking at the higher up jobs, even tried for a couple, but can't get anything higher yet. Bad timing on this, my dream job became available, but it's too soon for me:

[veerus]

LOL... Lopetegui also got fired already?  Funny.

Nice overhaul.  Should've kept that right winger who was apparently the best player.   

[Scratch]

22 minutes ago, veerus said:

LOL... Lopetegui also got fired already?  Funny.

Nice overhaul.  Should've kept that right winger who was apparently the best player.   

Yeah, he got sacked pretty quick and now we (I'm a Newcastle fan) have swapped Benetiz for him... We've improved from 14th to 12th, so that's something I guess.

The right winger was 32 years old with no training left in him, but I had a couple of youngsters who I thought would develop. I've just checked and we're bright green in that position again (at the end of Jan). I tell you, my staff just can't see the bigger picture...

[Scratch]

Season 1 - Macclesfield Town

After taking the Macclesfield Town job in the pre-season, then totally overhauling the squad, we finally took to the field to see if we could turn the expected relegation battle into a promotion push.

 

Transfers

There were no significant transfers after the pre-season. A couple of our older signings got left behind by the developing youngsters and were sold in January. We couldn't find anyone to bring in that would improve our squad within the budget we have available.

We did have one of our best players stolen away from us:

A young Slovenian left back, who'd developed strongly and broken into the national team. Unfortunately we had to include a release clause to get him to sign and once his value increased beyond that, the bids came in. That happened in February though, so at least we got to keep him until the end of the season.

 

Player Development

One of the things I noticed was that our loanees didn't seem to develop like our regular players.

Maybe one or two improved a tiny bit? It was hard to tell as they don't get the improvement indicators, but although they levelled up after games, there was no discernible improvement in their attributes.

So the loanees became our backup players. From now on, I will only loan players who can help as they are, rather than expect them to develop while they are with us.

Our other players all developed pretty well, although several hit the limit they could achieve with us and started displaying "Needs to play at a higher level to improve". Hang in there fellas, we'll try to get you that experience next season!

I'll just give you one eg of the sort of improvement we saw with some of the youngster. Reece Mitchell started the season looking like this:

and ended looking like this:

Many of his attributes only improved a point or two and we'd definitely like his Physicals to improve more, but his Dribbling and Passing both increased by 6 points! Not bad and makes him a pretty good League 2 player.

This is our starting striker at the end of the season (don't have the before shot, but he improved quite a bit too):

Once again, pretty good for League 2.

 

Cups

No cup success for us this year. We only lasted a couple of rounds in each, although we got a few good results.

Leeds beat us 2-0 in the second round of the League Cup, although we had the better of them (apart from the goals):

In the FA Cup, we beat Blackpool 2-1 in the second round, but then Preston put us out by beating us 2-1 in the third round:

In the Checkatrade Trophy, we beat Sunderland on penalties in the third round, which was deserved but super tense:

Doncaster knocked us out at the next step, beating us 2-1 in the Quarter Final.

After that loss, I checked my Reputation and it turns out I've made the jump to Obscure!

 

The League

Forget the cups, this is what it's all about. I want promotion!

We started out as relegation battlers, but quickly proved that we were a solid mid-table team. As our youngsters improved so did our standing and we slowly climbed the table.

With 10 games to go in the league, the table looked like this:

Only 2 points behind the leaders. More importantly 5 points clear of 4th. We'd love the league title, but automatic promotion is our first priority.

In the very next game this happened (and it wasn't the first time, if we could just defend a lead, we'd have already clinched the title):

The next 4 games after that saw 2 wins and 2 losses. Not great form! Were we throwing it away?

Not really, the other teams were all in pretty poor form too. Mansfield went 1-2-2 to drop from top place to third. MK Dons went 1-1-3 to fall away in 4th. Only Forest Green were playing well and they leapfrogged the rest of us to go top.

As it happens our next game was against... Forest Green! Yes, win this and we go top. Lose it and say goodbye to the title. We scored mid way through the game and tried to hang on and not fall prey to the late goal monster...

Yes! They peppered our goal, but we hung on.

We were top, with 4 games to go... And we were 10 points clear of 4th with 4 games to go, so promotion was looking pretty good. Sure enough, a couple of games later:

Woot! My Reputation was still Obscure though. Was hoping for a bump, but I guess not. Maybe winning the title will help? We pushed on.

Our form was still not great. We had a couple of draws, but with one game to go we were still top by two points:

We had to beat 12th placed Cambridge to make sure of the title. A draw would mean it going to goal difference if second or third won. With 30 minutes to go, it was 1:1 and we were ahead on goal difference:

Then we scored in the 84th minute!

The title's ours as long as we can hold on to this lead for 10 minutes or so. We batten down the hatches:

It works! We win the game, despite them throwing everything at us:

Which means....

Yes!! This season was a long one with plenty of struggles and winning the title was a great feeling, especially as it went down to the wire. I haven't enjoyed FMM this much in a long time.

Here's the table proper:

That shows you it was far from plain sailing. Only 83 points - good enough to win the league this time around, but I think of that as a low score. Only 86 goals for (less than 2 per game), while conceding 63. Still I'll take it!

 

My Stats

Here's my history for this year:

And here is my profile:

Unfortunately winning the title didn't improve my reputation. I'm still Obscure.

Not sure why I've only got 1 for Domestic Player Bias. We have about 6 foreigners in the entire squad... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

The Future

The fact that I'm still Obscure means I'll likely have to stay at Macclesfield for a while longer. I'm almost happy about that, as I'm building here, but it's still a small club. I'd take a move to a larger club right now if I could get it.

Not likely to happen. But we'll see what happens in the off season.
 

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Scratch

[URz]

Equaliser 90+7 😱

[Scratch]

19 minutes ago, URz said:

Equaliser 90+7 😱

Yeah... 

Thing is though, at one point I was all "these last minute equalisers are killing me!", but I won League 2 with Macclesfield, which is probably better than could happen in real life. So maybe I should have lost those games (just wish it wasn't last minute too often).

[URz]

You’re right. It is the last minute goals that you remember more - both in FMM and IRL......and we never complain about the ones for us.

Congrats on a great season by the way!

[Scratch]

39 minutes ago, URz said:

You’re right. It is the last minute goals that you remember more - both in FMM and IRL......and we never complain about the ones for us.

Congrats on a great season by the way!

Thanks! Yeah, I did win/draw a couple with last minute goals and I did NOT complain about that. But I do have to say that the opposition did it 3 or 4 times more often than me. Better drama I guess, but I'd be happier to lose more of those games with 56th minute goals... Anyway, I won't complain (much)!

[URz]

When it’s happened to me I’ve had a look at the Opposition settings to try and learn how to stop it and instead of being on Overload that I expected it is usually on Contain!

[Scratch]

2 minutes ago, URz said:

When it’s happened to me I’ve had a look at the Opposition settings to try and learn how to stop it and instead of being on Overload that I expected it is usually on Contain!

Yeah, I noticed that in 18, teams scored pretty well when they were apparently 'containing'. Wonder if it's related to that?

[Twister045]

Great write up for the first season, real sense of drama and achievement! Another squad overhaul in the summer maybe...? 

[Scratch]

34 minutes ago, Twister045 said:

Great write up for the first season, real sense of drama and achievement! Another squad overhaul in the summer maybe...? 

Thanks mate, it sure felt like a tense dramatic season while playing it! I haven't got to the new season event yet, so not sure how much budget I'll have, but it's unlikely to be much, so it will probably just be more young free agents coming in. Maybe I can pick up a couple discarded by the top clubs.

In my last save in FMM18, I had £2.5B available to spend, so it's taking some getting used to the lower leagues again!

[FuddledFox]

Excellent season and congratulations on the title, the only way is up now!

[Scratch]

4 minutes ago, Foxy said:

Excellent season and congratulations on the title, the only way is up now!

Well I'd like to think that, but there is always the other direction... 😄

[BatiGoal]

Enjoyed the update, and kinda expected it was going to be close. Just wasn't sure whether you'd end just north or south hehe! Congrats. Bring on the next wave of opponents. 

[Kingsolop]

Great job here mate

[Cockers2505]

Really good Scratch, happy to see you get that promotion, you keeping with them or are you trying to get a better team.

[Rob]

I enjoyed reading that. Keep going!

[Scratch]

15 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Enjoyed the update, and kinda expected it was going to be close. Just wasn't sure whether you'd end just north or south hehe! Congrats. Bring on the next wave of opponents. 

Thanks mate. Haha! You missed my Pinamonto career where the last 12 seasons was "won everything, scored 100 goals"... It's not *always* close with my careers.   

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15 hours ago, Kingsolop said:

Great job here mate

Thanks mate! Much appreciated. 

[Scratch]

14 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Really good Scratch, happy to see you get that promotion, you keeping with them or are you trying to get a better team.

Thanks @Cockers2505 - I would really like to jump ship. My board won't let me have a max wage of more than £2.5K which is the same as in L2 and not much compared to some clubs in L1. I'd love to jump to a big club, even one wallowing down here in L1. But I'm still obscure so no one will take me...

I'm trying not to apply too much, so I can keep my Loyalty value higher than 1   so only picking ones I think are realistic, but none of them will go for it.

The only people I can sign are promising youngsters that might turn out good in a few years (but I gotta get something out of them this year). So looking like it's another season with the minnows over achieving.