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

[Aaron55]

Great update, good luck with next season! 

[Scratch]

9 hours ago, Rob2017 said:

I enjoyed reading that. Keep going!

Thanks mate! 

[Scratch]

59 minutes ago, Aaron55 said:

Great update, good luck with next season! 

Thanks mate, gonna need it!

[Nucleus]

Great first update Scratch! Solid going winning the league, KIU

[Scratch]

7 hours ago, Nucleus said:

Great first update Scratch! Solid going winning the league, KIU

Thanks mate. Different world down here from a 1KC though! 🙂

[Scratch]

It's taking a little getting used to the League 1 style.

For example my boys just won't do this (which the Cheltenham lads obviously have down pat):

Spoiler

 

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by Scratch

[Nucleus]

8 hours ago, Scratch said:

Thanks mate. Different world down here from a 1KC though! 🙂

Isn’t it just! I did a Salford City race to be perfect last year. Considerably easier on 18 in the lower leagues

[Scratch]

Season 2 in the bag... Gonna be an epic update when it comes. Not recommended for anyone with a heart condition.

[Scratch]

Season 2 - Macclesfield Town

 

Winning League 2 with Macclesfield was a great start to this career, but it didn't improve my reputation enough for me to get a job with a bigger club, so I head into a new season with Macclesfield in League 1.

Our wage budget is still miniscule (£2.5K per week max, same as last season in L2) and there are no funds to speak of for transfers. Therefore our only option is the same as last year: find young players with a good attribute base and a large difference between CA and PA and try to develop them as quickly as possible.

As an aside, I was expecting this to be a challenge where you jump from club to club every year or two, but it's really hard to improve your reputation in FMM19. I now think I'll be at Macclesfield a long time before I earn a move that's worthwhile.

 

Transfers

Spoiler

Leaving us was Paljk, our best player. He had his release clause met in February of season 1, but had to wait until the transfer window opened at the start of this season to actually leave. Apart from that, we just sold players with no future here.

Coming in were a whole bunch of promising youngsters. Some of these will develop into champions, some of them will bomb. Amazingly, the youth system gave us Glen Johnson's regen (Owers)!

We turned down quite a few bids throughout the year, which resulted in a couple of unhappy players. Each time we gave them a new contract, but they all now have release clauses, so sooner or later we'll lose someone.

 

Player Development

Our season 1 youngsters had developed well last year and most continued this into season 2. A few of them are looking really good for League 1:

Spoiler

 

 

Our season 2 youngsters were obviously starting a fair way behind them, but a couple came on strongly enough to become fixtures in the team:

Spoiler

 

 

There are a bunch of other youngsters who are coming along nicely and will probably force their way into the team next year. They played a fair bit this year already, but are still works in progress.

Of course, none of the players you see above were like that at the start of the season, which means the pattern follows last year: We start off mid-table at best, winning some and losing some, before we gradually improve and make a late run.

 

Cups

No cup success this year either. Birmingham beat us 3-1 in the third round of the League Cup:

In the FA Cup, we beat Bolton in the second round, but AFC Wimbledon put us out in the third round, beating us 2-0:

In the Checkatrade Trophy, we beat Wigan in the third round, but Fleetwood knocked us out in the Quarter Final, beating us 2-1:

 

The League

We started off against Barnsley, who gave us a real welcome to League 1. We were 5-0 down after 36 minutes. To our credit, we scored a couple of goals in the second half to bring it back to 5-2, but it showed us what we were up against and how far we had to go.

It's fair to say our opening months were a bit rough, but as mentioned above, we got better near the end of the season as our players developed. Would we be able to force our way into playoff contention or even nick the title like year?

With 12 games to go, the table looked like this:

The title is surely out of reach this year, but we're only 3 points away from a playoff spot. And we're getting stronger! Our run in looks like this (some tough games in there):

We put Bolton away, no worries. The next game, at home against 23rd placed Plymouth? Simple right? Not so much. Then Bristol Rovers hammered us 5-2...

That leaves us 7 points adrift...

Umm, we're going backwards! That's not right... Is it over? Well, there are still 9 games to go, we can't give up yet...

We draw against Exeter, beat Oxford (sorry fellas), beat Sunderland (no apologies) and draw against Accrington:

That leaves us... still 7 points behind:

Hmm... 7 points to make up, with 5 games to go? Time to get serious... Big boy pants on now fellas! We play Wigan and Blackpool who are both above us, followed by Gillingham. We squeeze 1 goal victories in each game (playing the most defensive tactic possible to prevent late goals):

That leaves us in the final playoff spot with 2 games to go:

Surely we can do this! The next game is against Doncaster, who are mid-table with nothing to play for.

Well, nothing to play for apart from pride... Have we blown it? We beat the big teams, then fall to one we should beat? We're 2 points behind with a game to play...

We're facing Rochedale who have nothing to play for (sound familiar?), while Blackpool are away at Bradford City, who are 9th and can't quite catch us (if we win). So... we need to win and hope that Bradford beat Blackpool.

Bradford start well and go ahead, so they are doing their part. Unfortunately Rochedale score in the 27th minute, leaving the table looking like this:

Rochedale soak up the sustained pressure we apply, but have a player sent off in the 59th minute. That's our opening - we score a few minutes later. We're back up to 7th, one point behind Blackpool in the final playoff position. We need to win this game.

We score again!

And we're back in the final playoff position.

We just need to hold on for another 13 or 14 minutes. All of our CBs become NNDs, WBs become DFBs, anyone who can move back down the pitch to DM or DW does so. We suck it up....

Whew... What. A. Ride... Don't get excitement like this in a 1KC...

I promised drama, and drama - I think you'll agree - has been delivered... So please don't get too upset when I tell you the actual playoffs were an anti-climax:

Spoiler

Yeah baby!

Here's the final table (as you can see we had a lot of trouble stopping our opponents from scoring, especially early in the year):

Spoiler

 

My Stats

Here's my history for this year:

Manager of the Year for the second year in a row (didn't include that last time as it came after my update):

And here is my profile:

Still Obscure! No improvement in my reputation at all this year, despite promotion for the second year in a row. Tough crowd... I know they are talking about me on the Totally Football League podcast... I can't actually be "obscure"!

 

The Future

Deja vu! The fact that I'm still Obscure means I'll likely have to stay at Macclesfield for a while longer. I've applied to bigger clubs in the same division as me and they just aren't interested. No one at a higher level is interested either.

So next year I will almost certainly be trying to get Macclesfield's youngsters to develop enough for a late run at the promotion spots. To be honest, I can't see anyway out of this club until I've won a major cup or the Premier League.

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Scratch

[Rob]

Brilliant season!!!

[BatiGoal]

Get in there!! Good job, man 👏 

[Cockers2505]

Check you out, you will be nearly as good as me soon 🤣😉 really good mate, glad to see you get the recognition you deserve, promotion is promotion and I bow to your excellent season, well done mate, it gets serious from here, the players start to look drab in the next league, I had to fight for every point, my tactics didn't work as well, I began to tinker again, it's really tough this year, but that is what makes this version (IMO) the best so far, brilliant mate 👏

Edited November 13, 2018 by Cockers2505

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, Rob2017 said:

Brilliant season!!!

Thanks mate!

17 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Get in there!! Good job, man 👏 

You too BG, thanks! Will try to make it more boring from here on in...

[Scratch]

12 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Check you out, you will be nearly as good as me soon 🤣😉 really good mate, glad to see you get the recognition you deserve, promotion is promotion and I bow to your excellent season, well done mate, it gets serious from here, the players start to look drab in the next league, I had to fight for every point, my tactics didn't work as well, I began to tinker again, it's really tough this year, but that is what makes this version (IMO) the best so far, brilliant mate 👏

Haha, just posted this over on your thread:

"I think I have the key to breaking FMM... Not guaranteed success, but in a much stronger position now than I thought I'd be (even though only a few games in to the season)."

I thought this was going to be a really tough season, stepping up to the Championship with what's still a minnow, but now feeling quietly confident...

[Scratch]

Related: 

 

[veerus]

Those nail biters are the best.  Well done.  Now start winning actual titles already.  

[Scratch]

12 hours ago, veerus said:

Those nail biters are the best.  Well done.  Now start winning actual titles already.  

Haha, thanks mate. I've said it above a few times, but this is much more fun than winning all the time. That said, I'm thinking we'll start winning lots in the next few years!

[Scratch]

In what's probably a serious error in judgement, the next update (currently in production) is going to be the longest ever. While most of you will only skim it (fair enough), it's going to contain heap of stuff, including:

• The formula for taking a guaranteed massive leap forward every year
• The case of the curious regen
• A cup run (not saying if I won it or not though)

And yes, the League goes down to the last game of the season again...

Scratch, did we just write an ad for our update? Why yes, other Scratch, yes we did. 

[BatiGoal]

59 minutes ago, Scratch said:

While most of you will only skim it (fair enough),

Calling me a @samhardy how dare you! That's the worst thing anyone has ever called me. 😤

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, BatiGoal said:

Calling me a @samhardy how dare you! That's the worst thing anyone has ever called me. 😤

LOL, that's why I used 'most of you'. 😄

[BatiGoal]

1 hour ago, Scratch said:

LOL, that's why I used 'most of you'. 😄

I apologize, I shouldn't be so unfair to the kid. He's adorable and he doesn't skim. The boy can't read. 

[Scratch]

Season 3 - Macclesfield

 

Two seasons down. Two promotions achieved. It's the Championship this year - can I make it three in a row?

Without telling you the actual outcome (yet), I'm exceptionally confident by this stage. I think I've worked out how to take a massive leap forward every year, without fail.

 

The Formula

It's pretty simple really:

Step 1

At the start of each season, buy the best young players you can.

You're looking for young players with a good attribute base, who have a large difference between CA and PA as identified by your staff. Staff often get the PA wrong, but I find they are relatively accurate with the gap.

A player with a good base and a large CA/PA gap is likely to develop a lot.

Step 2

Play the youngsters. As much as you can. I suspect this was always the case, but now we can actually see that it improves the players.

I still buy way too many youngsters (can't help myself), but you need to focus on the ones doing well and grow them. At the start of the year they will be weaker than your established players, but by the end, they will be equal or better.

Step 3

Repeat the process.

I find that my players get close to max development after two seasons and that's the time to say goodbye to most of them.

The previous season's youngsters then step up to become the established players. They'll keep improving throughout the season, but you need make sure you are playing this years youngsters a LOT - because next year, they are going to replace this year's established players...

And the cycle continues.

Summary

Like I said pretty simple... The key of course is that each year you are getting better and better youngsters.

The youngsters I got in L2 developed into reasonable Championship players before maxing out. The ones I got in L1 developed into decent Premiership players before maxing out. etc.

 

Supercharging It

As I mention in a separate update above, I've worked out how to pretty easily make some money (by buying and selling players at a profit) to finance the club.

This won't help you buy established players for the next level, as they won't want to play for you. Your club's reputation climbs as slowly as yours does. However, having some extra money on hand opens up a better class of youngster to you.

You can pay more to buy them and you can offer them a higher wage, etc. You still need to play them a lot to develop them, so the model doesn't change. And it's not that easy to find the real gems, but they are there if you spend the time looking for them.

 

Transfers

There are a LOT of transfers this season and it generated us some much needed cash. Believe it or not, I didn't set out to do that on purpose.

I suffer from the 'just one more' syndrome... I find a good player who will improve the team, so I grab them. Then I see someone even better... Before you know it, I've reached the 40 player limit... So then you start to try to offload some you just brought in.

FMM18 punished you for this ("haha, go on, try to sell them, they're gonna hate you, let's have a mutiny!"). FMM19 rewards you ("sure, go on, sell them, and why not make a bundle on them while you're at it!").

Anyway, here's our extensive transfer dealings this year:

Spoiler

We followed the strategy above and sold many of our season 1 signings. Reece Mitchell, Jordan Roberts, Anton Rodgers, Koby Arthur, Scott Wilson, Tyrone Marsh, Nathan Cameron, Jake Alley... 

They were all first choice players last season, but they need to make way for: a) last season's youngsters who are now better or equal to them and will continue to improve this year, and b) this seasons youngsters who'll be even better yet.

Coming in are a bunch of pretty promising players. Sander Doesberg is Huntelaar's regen and was available for only £1.5M. Dean Campbell is Peter Crouch's regen. I think Mols is Soldado and Barovero is D'Alessandro.

They aren't all regens though. Some are real youngsters. And there are a couple of more established players:

• Bernado was the one established higher class player I could convince to join. He was great for 6 months, then outcasted himself in January and forced a move away...

• Carson is an older and solid goalkeeper (young goalkeepers seem to make too many mistakes).

But this was not easy. I literally spent hours finding these players. For every good player I signed, there were ten others who didn't want to leave their country yet, or didn't think my team was big enough. The Interested flag in the search really needs to hide those players...

Like I said above: "it's not that easy to find the real gems, but they are there if you spend the time looking for them."

 

An Interesting Regen

You have to love picking up good regens via your youth team - especially when you are a tiny club punching above their weight in the Championship...

First, lets go back to my Pinamonti career in FMM18, where I posted a picture of this regen:

 

Now, let's look at this youth team player (after almost a year's development):

I've retrained him on both flanks, as that's where I'm using him. I'm 99% sure both these regens are based on the same player: Joe Cole. Now I don't have a screenshot of Joe Cole, because

• a) I neglected to take one in the Pinamonti career and

• b) Joe Cole is not in the game. I guess he's remembered from last year's version?

EDIT: It turns out I was wrong on this: I looked for Joe Cole by loading the England default (L2 and above). He's not in that, but he IS in game with all levels of England loaded (which is what this career used) or with the US loaded.

Anyway, this was a nice touch:

Joe Cole's former teammate Frank Lampard is calling for Joe Cole's regen to get an England cap...

 

Transfer Window Shakeup

Oh yeah, not only did my approach get me the wheeler dealer award (so fitting), it also triggered the Transfer Window Shakeup unlockable:

God help me now...

 

Cups

We travelled to Newcastle in the second round of the League Cup and outclassed them, but couldn't score and went out on penalties.

We did get a bit of a run going in the FA Cup...

We beat Villa 4-1 in the third round:

followed by a 5-1 victory over Huddersfield in the 4th round:

then beating Middlesbrough 1-0 in the 5th round, before beating Tottenham 3-0 in the 6th round:

Surely this is going to be our year! Nope. Arsenal bring us back to ground with a 3-1 defeat in the Semi Final...

 

The League

As always, we started off slowly as the new youngsters found their feet, then gathered momentum as the season wore on (which also explains why we do better in the FA Cup than the League Cup).

With 10 games to go, we were second:

The top 4 teams were only separated by a single point.

We drew against promotion rival Preston North End (and lost our star forward Doesburg for 4 weeks), but then got into a good groove (ignoring the cup loss):

A few too many draws though. Where did it leave us with 2 games to go? First on goal difference, with a game in hand...

If we could win the next game, it'd be automatic promotion! And goal difference would mean the title was virtually ours. We really really wanted a win. And... We got it!

A 93rd minute goal was needed. Lucky we have good strikers, hey? Or should that be "good we have lucky strikers"?

That gave us promotion to the EPL, but we'd have to wait a week to wrap up the Championship. The only way we could lose it would be if we lost, Southampton won and the goal difference swung 7 points the other way.

As it happened, we could only grind out a draw, but that was enough..

 

Club Development

I asked for better training facilities immediately after winning promotion and the board finally caved in:

I also got an improvement to the academy. I asked again in the off season and they gave me another boost (training facilities only this time), so they are finally loosing the purse strings... We're still short of most Premier League clubs, but I was fully expecting them to continue rejecting me.

 

My Stats

Here's my history for this year:

Manager of the Year for the third year in a row:

And here is my profile:

National reputation! Well, they say everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame and that was mine...

My reputation was still Regional after promotion and winning the title. It looks like the Manager of the Year award pushed me just over into National, but it was back to Regional by early August. Fame is certainly fleeting round here...

 

Other Jobs

I applied for all the ITN jobs that came along, but none were interested, not even Nigeria (who used to be easy to get).

The only club job I applied for was Newcastle (Lopetegui have no more success than Benetiz), but I was never going to get that. I didn't bother with any others because the reputations of the rumoured applicants (in the news message) are all higher than mine.

 

The Future

It's been really hard to improve my reputation, but bigger and better things await us in the Premier League next season.

I have full confidence that our strategy will have us knocking down the doors for Europe after a season or so. Sooner or later we're going to win something and then I can really start to build a reputation.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Scratch

[FuddledFox]

Two promotions and you still have an obscure reputation is a joke. You can tell you are a Newcastle fan with that goals for and against columns as you are truly bringing back “Keegan ball”.

You might be interested in this btw.

 

[Scratch]

5 minutes ago, Foxy said:

Two promotions and you still have an obscure reputation is a joke. You can tell you are a Newcastle fan with that goals for and against columns as you are truly bringing back “Keegan ball”.

You might be interested in this btw.

 

Thanks for the comment mate, but I'm guessing that was for the last season? I just posted Season 3 ten minutes ago! 😄

I'm up to National reputation now (although it took me back to Regional after a few weeks). And I only conceded 42 goals this time around, so less Keegan ball than earlier seasons. 😂

And thanks for linking me to that challenge - looks great. Thanks for adding me to the leaderboard, though I'm up to 3 now. Probably my last one though. No higher to go and I'll probably do a 1KC after this one.... 

[Rob]

I always love a Scratch guide, but this one is embedded in a career thread update. My mind is blown. 

[Scratch]

2 minutes ago, Rob2017 said:

I always love a Scratch guide, but this one is embedded in a career thread update. My mind is blown. 

Thanks mate! I used to do that sort of thing more often, back when I was first coming to grips with the 1KC. I sit down to write an update and before I know it I'd have explained something like that! 🙂 Not that this one is particularly insightful, but it just came out and I figured may as well include it...

[FuddledFox]

21 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Thanks for the comment mate, but I'm guessing that was for the last season? I just posted Season 3 ten minutes ago! 😄

I'm up to National reputation now (although it took me back to Regional after a few weeks). And I only conceded 42 goals this time around, so less Keegan ball than earlier seasons. 😂

And thanks for linking me to that challenge - looks great. Thanks for adding me to the leaderboard, though I'm up to 3 now. Probably my last one though. No higher to go and I'll probably do a 1KC after this one.... 

I posted a split second after you 😂

I will give season 3 a read when I have more time later and update the leaderboard.

[Scratch]

4 minutes ago, Foxy said:

I posted a split second after you 😂

I will give season 3 a read when I have more time later and update the leaderboard.

Haha, guessed as much... No hurry - season 3 update is... long. TLDR: Won the Championship!

[URz]

You could always start a 1KC with one of your youngsters while you complete this challenge with Macclesfield 😉

[Scratch]

Just now, URz said:

You could always start a 1KC with one of your youngsters while you complete this challenge with Macclesfield 😉

Yeah, actually that might work. Except I've already started planning the 1KC (if you can call it that)... 😄