Career Scratch Tries: The Super Secret Scottish 1KC (Complete)

[Scratch]

So... I went and did a 1KC without telling anyone... It wasn't meant to be a secret, I'm just a little too busy to write it up at the moment, and well one thing led to another: First I thought I might write up a couple of seasons together, then I thought maybe I'd write up the first 5 seasons together, and then ... it was over!

This is the lad, Fraser Hornby, playing at Celtic:

He was a fantastic striker who banged goals in for fun, probably better than any other striker I've ever used (though I suspect that's because I was using the pre-winter update version of FMM19). The only downside, he's my only 1KC striker that didn't decide I was his favourite person. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I picked up the Scottish job early on:

And here is his INT goal total (7 goals) just before our first game with me in charge (I take the 7 goals off down below):

We did alright at the ITN level. No major tournament trophies, but a few semi finals and consistently good, meaning we made it to ranked 3rd in the world:

At Celtic we won pretty much everything, pretty much all the time:

Spoiler

I did alright as a manager, except I suck big time at transfers:

As with all my Celtic careers: at the beginning you can't get the top players to join you, so you have to buy the top young players. Then by the time the top players will sign for you, you don't need them. The only really big name signings I made were Havertz and De Gea. The rest were youngsters that came through at Celtic. I started out not using known regens, but I lost my will somewhere along the way and cherry picked a few. 

I had planned on making Pavon the side story of the save and seeing how many assists he could get. Unfortunately Hornby fell out with most of the team a couple of seasons in, meaning I had to sell off most of the squad, including Pavon. His replacement was this guy, who was ace:

Spoiler

He was an early signing, so I don't know who's regen he was, but he was top quality for us. If you take off the game he played for Barcelona before we signed him, he played 249 games and made 249 assists. Not bad. He didn't play as much as he could have due to a) injuries; and b) me giving playing time to the next batch of young hopefuls; so didn't have a chance to go for the 500 assists. One day, I'll crack that.

Anyway, Hornby brought up the 1K with his second goal (out of five) in the Betfred Cup Final on 28th November 2027 (next year I want to propose a fastest 1KC leaderboard as well as highest total):

Here's the video of the goal in case you're interested: 

Spoiler

 

 

And here is his history:

He pretty consistently picked up an injury each year, but nothing more than 1 month, some times just a 10 day injury and a couple of years he even went injury free. 

He scored a total of 879 League goals and 124 ITN goals (131 ITN goals minus 7 before I took over, screenshots up the top). That adds up to: 1003 goals.

He's only 28 and could almost certainly make 1.5K, but I'm stopping here. At times this save was the most fun I've ever had with FMM, as the goals rained in and I got through seasons quicker than ever before. At other times it dragged badly, because I wanted to be playing a save I could use my scout app with.

I almost packed it in a couple of times, but in the end I wanted to get at least one 1KC in the bag in FMM19, after failing a couple (I abandoned my Pedro / Beijing save due to being too busy and accidentally cheated on my Armstrong Sequel save). If I thought I could make it to 2KC, I'd have kept it quiet and tied with @Nucleus the day before FMM20 comes out, just like last year! 😄 But there's no way I can make it that far, so I'm calling it quits now...

 

[smoggy90]

Fantastic career Scratch! I like the sound of a fastest 1k, could definitely add another element to the standard 1k challenge. Hornby looks different class with those attributes. 

[Scratch]

17 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

Fantastic career Scratch! I like the sound of a fastest 1k, could definitely add another element to the standard 1k challenge. Hornby looks different class with those attributes. 

Thanks Smoggy!

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm ever going to do another 22 season career trying to get the highest number possible, so I started thinking: what if it was about the fastest to 1K. I think the one leaderboard could have a most goals section and a fastest to 1KC section. Nucleus will probably top both, but it would give people the option of a 'short' 1KC if they didn't want to go all the way.

As for Hornby, yeah, he was top notch. I've had variable success training youngsters, but it seems if you get them young and play them regularly and they perform well, then they develop the best. Hornby was played consistently from the start and he got a lot of high ratings (because he was scoring goals) and he seemed to increase faster and better as a result. He had some increments where he only went up one or two points, but often he'd be going up 5 or 6. And of course it only took a couple of updates to get 20 Aerial (thanks FMM19)...

Trained him as a Target Man / Aerial until he got to 20, then trained him as AF focusing on Pace, then Shooting, then Movement and Decisions. Ran out of development points to get him to 20 in the last two of those, but still, what a beast!

[Chazza111]

Wow! 100 goals in a season. Incredible effort!

[Scratch]

11 hours ago, Chazza111 said:

Wow! 100 goals in a season. Incredible effort!

Thanks! Though it's not too hard in FMM19 (especially the pre winter-update version). Any striker with Aerial of 20 is going to score a bucketload. And if you get a good striker in a weaker league like Scotland, then it's even easier...

[danovic78]

Great going @Scratch

I have checked him out a few times, being an Everton fan but he has never got close to those stats. His stamina was always an issue in my saves.

[Scratch]

6 minutes ago, danovic78 said:

Great going @Scratch

I have checked him out a few times, being an Everton fan but he has never got close to those stats. His stamina was always an issue in my saves.

Thanks @danovic78, 

Yeah, he turned out better than I expected. I think he's the best striker I've ever had in terms of attributes (though I could be wrong, I can't remember all of their stats exactly).

He levelled up massively when he was younger, but then slowed down as he got older - as in he only had a couple of points of improvement each time he levelled up instead of 5 or 6 when he was younger. I guess that's the way the game goes, as I've seen that with other players. 

I can't remember now, but I probably trained his Stamina for a while. I tend to do that for anyone with low Stamina. And I know for a while that he was working with the Fitness coach and that seemed to level his Physicals up faster. He also worked with the attacking coach for a while which helped his Shooting / Movement etc.

I've seen in other saves where that sort of improvement (working with coaches) can improve a player without using any of his CA/PA difference up (generally an increment uses up 5 points), so it's free attribute increases basically. That's one of the reasons I need to abandon this save, it's quite frustrating not being able to use my scouting tool on it! I want to confirm that theory, and playing a non challenge save where I can cheat will let me do that (as well as spend more time testing the tool and improving it so I can release it sometime).

[Aaron Thornton]

That transfer profit though 😍😍😍

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

That transfer profit though 😍😍😍

Yeah... Happens to me every 1KC, especially with Celtic. Early on there is just no way to spend the money because noone expensive wants to come play for you. So you buy youngsters instead. Then by the time you're good enough that the expensive players will come play for you, your youngsters are better than or equal to them, so there is no point buying them...

Havertz was really the only expensive big name outfield player I bought and I only did that because I've used him before and liked him. He wasn't any better than the players I'd developed from youngsters.

This version is easier than ever to pick up top regens on the cheap, even if you're not tracking regens. Just search for transfer listed players abroad, ordered by age (ie looking for youngsters) and most of them are great. Just scout them first and buy the ones with high ratings. The scouts are often wrong, but close enough that you'll get good players, even if some don't pan out. Or even just buy all the Brazilians or Spaniards, most of them are great or at least good enough.

One save I was tracking regens and about 50% of the top ones that I was tracking ended up as players I couldn't buy (at a top team and playing or in the squad), but the other 50% were at small clubs or better yet: transfer listed and available for 10% of their list price). Crazy stuff.