Career Oz Golden Generation Reborn: 2KC Goals / 1KC Assists [S12]

[Scratch]

Australia's Golden Generation: Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwartzer, Brett Emerton, Lucas Neil... All gone now.

Well, except for one, the last of the golden generation: Tim Cahill.

And who do we have to replace them? Not another golden generation by any stretch of the imagination...

But there is one youngster who inspires hope: Daniel Arzani.

Cahill played 108 times for Australia, is our record goal scorer with 50 goals and had a successful career in the EPL with Everton. Arzani has it all before him, although it's anyone's guess how good he will turn out to be.

 

A Partnership?

As Australia was bundled out of the 2018 World Cup, all eyes were on the bench, where Tim and Daniel sat next to each other. "Play them" screamed the nation! But Bert van Marwijk had his own ideas and started neither. Cahill came off the bench once, Arzani three times, but it was too little, too late.

Moving forward, Arzani will surely step up and be the focal point, but who does he have around him? Cahill had the Golden Generation, but Arzani... There may be a few decent players here or there, but he needs more than that. Cahill himself has retired from international football and is heading into retirement, so there is no help there. Or is there?

Seeking wisdom, I journeyed out into the desert, into the scorched heart of Australia. There a secret was revealed to me. One comes... His name is unknown, but he will be the warrior that Arzani needs by his side. Together they will lead the Socceroos to greatness.

 

The Challenge

• 2KC goals from Tim Cahill's regen

• 1KC assists from Daniel Arzani

To be honest, I'll be super surprised if I achieve either, but if it's ever going to happen, it will be with the pre-winter update version of FMM19. FMM20 is likely to retain many of the frustrating improvements that the latest version of FMM19 has, so this is likely my last chance at these huge targets.

 

Wait, You're Using A Regen?

Yep, which is perfectly fine by the rules.

It is a little risky though. You never know when they are going to drop or what ridiculous name they will have. I guess I can live with the name... The timeframe is the real problem, as I will have Australia loaded so I can managed the ITN team.

In my experience, most regens come back within 6 months or so, unless their nation's league is loaded. In that case, they seem to go into some sort of queue system. They could come back almost immediately, or it could be years. I remember once I had to wait 5 years for a regen of Ashley Cole to reappear in England.

There's even the chance that he won't come back at all. Regens aren't regens anymore, they are evogens. In practice, there is very little difference for most players, but every so often a player will come back with a different nation or will just disappear and have their PA distributed to other players... 

So we'll have to see how that works out.

 

Team

To have any chance of reaching these targets, I have to push the game to it's limits. That means I need a big club a) with enough money and reputation to attract Arzani and Cahill 2.0; and b) that plays in a weak league where goals will be easy to come by...

Fortunately I'm fairly familiar with just such a club.

Yes... I'm heading back to Celtic.

 

Will You Be Cheating?

No. Most of my recent careers have been cheat careers (not written up), where I've used the scouting app I've been developing. None of those careers have stuck however - they are useful for developing the app, but are missing something. So I'm leaving the app aside for this career.

That said, I don't expect there will be a huge difference. Like I said, to reach the targets, I have to push the game to it's limits. I'm going to use every trick in the legitimate play book, which means I'm going in strong on the regen path...

How can you trust me? I guess you can't, but if I wanted to cheat, well I have Neo like powers at this point and can bend the FMM/Matrix to my will if I want to...

I'm doing this to see if I can do it, so no point in cheating...

 

The Future

I've actually been playing this for a while and have 3 seasons in the bag. It's been a little up and down, but it's looking okay at the moment. I'll probably do a write up covering the first 3 seasons in the next day or two. After that, my aim is to get back to an update each season, fingers crossed. 

I'm unlikely to finish this before FMM20 drops, but hopefully I can power through it... Anyway, 🤞!!

 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Scratch

[Mr Tree]

exciting - good luck, i'm looking forward to seeing how the hunt for Tim's regen went!

[smoggy90]

Good luck mate, like Mr Tree said it'll be interesting to see when and where Cahill's regen drops. 

[Scratch]

Thanks @Mr Tree and @smoggy, much appreciated. I'm outta time to post the first three seasons tonight, but here is an extract from what I have so far:

Quote

I was hopeful he would appear at the beginning of the second season, as he did in one of my other saves. It was not to be. Nor did he appear at the start of the third season. 

😰

[Mr Tree]

uh-oh!!

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Mr Tree said:

uh-oh!!

At the risk of spoiling it, the update finishes like this:

Quote

 

"I've almost packed this save in a few times. If Tim Cahill's regen doesn't appear this off-season, I think I'll likely call it quits.

Mind you, I probably wouldn't bother writing all this up if I was going to quit, would I?"

 

 

And with that, I am going to post the update now (decided to finishes it tonight instead of catching up on work).

[Scratch]

Update - Seasons 1 to 3

I wasn't sure if this career was going to stick, so I jumped in and started playing. With 3 seasons in the bag, I now know this one is going all the way. Rather than separate updates, I figured I'd just report on the first 3 seasons together.

 

Transfers

There are more transfers than normal (though not as many as some others around here), as I need to make this team the best in the world as soon as possible. However, after 3 seasons and with Celtic's reputation now at 4.5 stars, I still can't attract the best players in the world, so I had to take a different path:

• In season 1, the focus was on available players I've used before: Palacios, Moro, Morilla, Peruzzi, Mac Allister (an honoury Scot!), Souttar, Rajkovic, Ndong, etc. I know these players will turn into very good players and will be a big upgrade on the current Celtic team.

• From season 2 onwards, I concentrated on regens. I'm still open to buying other players, it's just almost impossible to buy a player who will improve the team at this point.

With the original purchases now at the top of their game and the regens developing quickly, we're a pretty good team.

Here are the transfers for all 3 seasons:

Spoiler

 

 

Notable transfers:

• We bought Arzani for £32M in the first season, including a 50% sell on percentage - we couldn't afford him without the clause and we're never going to sell him (though there are offers every month).

• I had to let Tierney go, very reluctantly, as he really wanted to leave.

• I tried to sell Griffiths at the beginning but had no takers at £5M. I ended up selling him for £32M in January after he scored 1.5 goals per game. I would have kept him, but he was causing trouble at training, so I replaced him with Fabio Silva.

• Fabio Silva scored 57 goals in 51 games and was a great stand-in while waiting for Cahill 2.0, but he wanted to leave as well, so I replaced him with Zlatan 2.0 and Berbatov's replicant.

 

Results

Results have been very good, as expected:

Spoiler

 

 

We should win everything in Scotland, even without been building the team, so no surprises there. I'm not going to even bother showing any results.

The Champions League is the real measure of our progress and we've done better than expected. We have a very very good team now, but still we're ahead of where I expected to be. None of the finals were impressive, but some of our other performances were truly stunning (so I included one of those below):

Spoiler

 

 

 

Development and Injuries

At the end of the first season, Arzani looked like this - I was pretty happy with that (apart from the lost brain cells from the end of year party):

He hit the "needs to play at a higher level" message mid-way through season 2, but ended the season looking like this:

His development slowed near the end of season 3, still improving but only 2% on good Champions League matches. Still I can't complain if this is his best, it's better than I was expecting to be honest (certainly better than the AI develops him):

Luckily, Arzani has been pretty light on injuries, couldn't ask for much better than this, only a minor injury each year (and the season 3 injury was a ghost injury):

Spoiler

 

 

 

The Wait For Cahill 2.0

Tim retired and disappeared at the end of the first season.

I was hopeful he would appear at the beginning of the second season, as he did in one of my other saves. It was not to be. Nor did he appear at the start of the third season.

I was prepared to go two seasons without him, but it was a real blow for it to be three. I couldn't be sure he was even going to appear at all. I honestly thought about packing it in a few times. However, in the end I decided to persist into the 4th season and hope he appears.

 

ITN

Both France and Italy offered me jobs, so I must be doing something right - I just need the job to become available now.

Graham Arnold started the save as Very Secure in the Australian manager position. He dipped occasionally but always ended up back as Very Secure pretty quickly. Towards the end of the third season he ended up as Insecure, but was still in the position as the season closed. Fingers crossed!

 

Assists

Arzani got off to a good start in season 1, with 34 assists in 47 games (including the 3 games on loan before his transfer went through). A nice return, but nowhere near enough for 1K assists.

He needed to step it up in season 2 and that's just what he did, with 60 assists in 60 games. That made me start thinking that maybe, just maybe, the 1KC was possible.

Then came season 3 and just after New Year's he only had 13 assists from 30 games:

At this point I was thinking about packing it in again. He was getting touches, just nothing was going in, not even corners... Then it all clicked:

He had 14 assists in 5 games and while he couldn't continue quite that pace, he rallied to end up with 53 assists in 59 games:

 

Progress

Season	Arzani Assists	Cahill 2.0 Club Goals	Cahill 2.0 ITN Goals	Cahill Total Goals
01	34	N/A	N/A	N/A
02	60	N/A	N/A	N/A
03	53	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total	147 / 1000	N/A	N/A	0 / 2000

 

Future

I've almost packed this save in a few times. If Tim Cahill's regen doesn't appear this off-season, I think I'll likely call it quits.

Mind you, I probably wouldn't bother writing all this up if I was going to quit, would I?

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Scratch

[shosky]

Really interesting. Following with keen interest. Hopefully you won't have to pack it up. All the best

[Kanegan]

Good start. I had used Arzani last year in my Socceroos career and he was damn good. The wait for Cahill 2.0 is tantalizingly close now I feel. Good luck. 

[Real_Random]

Nice start mate, Arzani looks to be a great prospect for the Socceroos, although FMM seems to rate Jacob Italiano more than Arzani from what I’ve seen in some of my saves. Hopefully Timmy appears soon, although I find that when world class players from smaller nations retire, they always seem to be the first to get a PA swap. KIU

[Scratch]

8 hours ago, shosky said:

Really interesting. Following with keen interest. Hopefully you won't have to pack it up. All the best

Thanks mate. Spoiler: No need to pack it up. 😄

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Good start. I had used Arzani last year in my Socceroos career and he was damn good. The wait for Cahill 2.0 is tantalizingly close now I feel. Good luck. 

Thanks mate. Arzani's always looked a bit mediocre to me in the game, but he's trained up real well, much better than the AI does it. He's young enough that his PA will be variable, so I guess a lot depends on the luck of the draw. The one I got is certainly looking good.

Yeah Cahill 2.0 is tantalizingly close. 😄

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Real_Random said:

Nice start mate, Arzani looks to be a great prospect for the Socceroos, although FMM seems to rate Jacob Italiano more than Arzani from what I’ve seen in some of my saves. Hopefully Timmy appears soon, although I find that when world class players from smaller nations retire, they always seem to be the first to get a PA swap. KIU

Thanks mate. I've never used Italiano in FMM, but I'm buying up young Australians at the moment for ... some reason ... and I've just signed him. 3 seasons in, not that impressive, but looks like he has a fair bit of development in him. 

Yeah I was a bit worried Timmy's regen would never show, but I saw his regen came back in another save I was using to work on my scouting app thing and he came back whole. That's what gave me the idea to use him in a proper save. Mind you in that save he came back after just one year... No guarantees with this career, might be totally different. 🤞

[Scratch]

Update - Season 4 (Pre-Season)

The last update finished at the end of season 3. A couple of important things happened in the off season, not long afterwards.

 

First off, I live in Brisbane, Australia. Or I should say I used to live there - I obviously had to move to Glasgow to take up the Celtic job. Well, one Sunday evening, one of my mates back in Brisbane gave me a call about a young lad he'd seen playing in the reserve team for Taringa Rovers, who play in the Brisbane Premier League (the 4th tier in Australia).

I thought "yeah, right...". How could a 16 year old playing *in the reserves* in the *4th tier* in Australia have any chance of playing for Celtic. But this guy was a good mate, so I told him to fax through the young lad's attribute sheet. When I saw it I sat up straight:

My friend had scribbled: "I tell you mate, this guy is going to be the next Tim Cahill, only faster" on the fax. 

I thought about it. Even if he wasn't the next Tim Cahill, a sixteen year old with that pace and decent heading... well that player had potential to go places. And his name wasn't ridiculous either, which was a bonus. What did I have to lose?

So, I borrowed the office credit card and bought him:

You'll have to wait until the next update to see how he went (it's still fairly early in the season), but I will just leave you this from our first competitive game of the season:

Not bad. For context, before starting this career I was doing a 1KC on latest version and my striker scored 2 goals for the whole season (my worst 1KC start ever). Henderson looks great, is developing rapidly and comes into a settled team that is way better than the rest of the league. 

 

The other things that happened was that I opened my email one day to this headline:

I had no particular desire to manage Australia - I mean I love my country, but I had a good day job already. But really, Harry Kewell, Tony Popovic and John Aloisi? Not saying they are bad managers, but how many times have they won the Champions League? Why wasn't I the favourite? 

So I made a couple of calls and sure enough, they offered me the job. They were very careful to suck up to me as well. Not that I enjoyed that (so spineless).

Anyway. I'll sort the team out and bring back the glory days, like the time we beat England. Actually, screw that, let's aim higher. I'll need some good young players to help me do it though. Hmm, I think I know just the lad we need up front...

 

[Scratch]

I should have ended that by saying:

I went from just about giving up on this save to being super enthusiastic about it and positive about my chances. Everything is just lined up perfectly now:

• Henderson can go into the ITN team from day one, which will accelerate his progress even more.
• The Celtic team is really good now, so he'll score a lot more than he would have coming into the team in season 1 or even season 2.
• The opposition is weak and starting with 17 Pace and 14 Aerial - he will score from day one and quickly develop great attributes.

Everything is lined up and I'm so glad I didn't throw this away when Arzani couldn't get any assists or the regen didn't appear.  

[Mr Tree]

brilliant mate - good luck!

[Scratch]

6 minutes ago, Mr Tree said:

brilliant mate - good luck!

Thanks mate!

[smoggy90]

Love that last update mate, Cahill 2.0 looks superb with bags of potential and the INT job has landed perfectly.

Looking forward to seeing how many goals Henderson gets in his debut season and also racking up the assists nicely for Arzani.

[Scratch]

15 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

Love that last update mate, Cahill 2.0 looks superb with bags of potential and the INT job has landed perfectly.

Looking forward to seeing how many goals Henderson gets in his debut season and also racking up the assists nicely for Arzani.

Thanks mate! I'm actually pretty confident about the 2KC for Henderson, given his age (16), his starting attributes and his development (already 20 Aerial after just 2 updates). I've done 1.5KC before, and that was in FMM18 - it's easier to score this year (on the pre winter update version), so pretty confident about that. 

Not so sure about Arzani's 1KC assists - maybe, if he plays for 20 seasons! LOL. But as the team gets even better maybe he will be able to go past that 60. Finger crossed, but really not sure about this part.

[BatiGoal]

Here's me thinking that Scratch is one of those managers that learns from his mistakes. Here he is yet again finding himself in the midst of a truly shitty situation. How you do it is beyond me 😂 goodluck! 

[Scratch]

10 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Here's me thinking that Scratch is one of those managers that learns from his mistakes. Here he is yet again finding himself in the midst of a truly shitty situation. How you do it is beyond me 😂 goodluck! 

LOL, I haven't had any real close saves in a while, time to push myself! To be honest, when I started this I thought it very unlikely I could get those numbers, but figured I may as well give it a go. But I'm starting to think it won't be that close after all...

[Scratch]

Update - Season 4

So here we are. After 3 seasons waiting for the Tim Cahill regen, we've got him (Henderson) and we can get the 2KC part of this underway!

 

Transfers

Here are the transfers:

Spoiler

Our team is getting pretty good now, so we needed to clear out some of the players who aren't going to play much. Ntcham was the biggest name to leave. He's been excellent, but the regens have come through and some of the old guard had to leave. Ntcham drew the short straw.

Coming in were a bunch of young Australians, so I can train them up and make the National team competitive. The highlight of course was Henderson, a bargain at £2K, followed by Italiano, not so much at £53M. He looks good, but I wouldn't have bought him if he wasn't Australian.

Mind you, the board and the fans aren't impressed with me signing all these Aussies who are never going to be good enough to establish themselves in a world class team.

 

Tactics

I've had a few DMs from people asking what tactics I use. Most people generally don't share their 1KC tactics, but I've always been pretty open about mine. In fact, tweaking tactics was a large focus of my first ever 1KC write up a few years ago.

There was recently an excellent discussion on single striker tactics over in this thread. I pretty much gave away all my secrets in there, along with a lot of the reasoning, if you're interested. It's fascinating to see such different approaches from people such as @Foxy, @Ian and @Lord Danish.

It looks like I do some weird things (like play Defensive most of the time). Works for me though, with 2 out of every 3 goals going to the striker. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Results

A decent year:

A shock in the Betfred Cup though, as we were stunned by Livingston in the semi final:

Spoiler

Still, we won the Champions League for the 2nd time (out of 4 attempts). It was tight game, needing a late goal to go into extra time against Tottenham:

Spoiler

The league was easy, with a goal difference of more than 100. We wrapped it up nice and early on 13th Feb:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Development

Arzani stayed the same as last season, apart from an extra Fitness bump:

He is still creeping up in Champions League and ITN games, so there could be a final increment in store.

Henderson started the season looking like this:

He ate his vegemite and ended the season looking like this (wow!):

I counted up 13 increments this season. I'm not allowed to look behind the scenes in this career, but 13 increments equals an increase in CA of 65, which is massive. He will have inherited Tim Cahill's PA, which is high(ish) and he started in Australia's 4th tier, so I assume had a fairly low starting CA, leaving a large gap and loads of development to be had.

His development fits the pattern I've seen in my cheat careers: when there is a large gap, the player has lots of increments early on, sometimes without even playing. Once you get him scoring, he keeps on with the rapid increments, often quite large ones. Over the course of the season (and following seasons), the frequency slows down, as does the size of the increments.

Sure enough Henderson had a lot of increments early on, but then they slowed right down now. And the more recent increments have only seen a couple of points go up, whereas the earlier ones were much bigger.

Henderson has also benefited from both a) the Aerial super powerups and b) the Fitness coach bumps, which mean larger Physical improvements during regular updates AND extra increases outside regular updates. So that leaves him looking rather superb. And he's not quite finished yet...

 

Injuries

Arzani had a 10 day injury and two ghost injuries this year (I've included the match, but didn't bother with the News section). I used to be happy about ghost injuries, but he was out for 3 or 4 games each time anyway.

Spoiler

 

 

Henderson had one 10 day injury (and I needed to rest him a fair bit as well):

 

Assists

Arzani hit his stride this year, with 62 assists from 53 games.

It's a pity I can't count his ITN assists, but no matter, he just needs to keep on going like this. In case you're interested, here's how his assists compare with others in the team:

 

Club Goals

Henderson got off to a great start, with 79 goals from 47 games.

That's 1.7 goals a game - what a ratio, especially for a 16 year old! It's unheard of (for me at least).

My next best start is 60 goals from 57 game for Hornby and he was a couple of years older. The difference is that Henderson came into a settled world class team, 3 seasons in front of the very average Celtic that Hornby started with.

I was super frustrated that Cahill's regen didn't drop sooner, but in hindsight this has worked out wonderfully. It's worth highlighting that he scored 5 goals twice:

Spoiler

 

 

 

ITN Goals

Not much to report, but Henderson scored 7 goals in 5 games (he didn't play any ITN games before I got the job).

 

Progress

Season	Assists (Arzani)	Club Goals (Henderson)	ITN Goals (Henderson)	Total Goals (Henderson)
01	34	N/A	N/A	N/A
02	60	N/A	N/A	N/A
03	53	N/A	N/A	N/A
04	62	79	7	86
Total	209 / 1000	79	7	86 / 2000

 

The Future

For the first time I'm starting to think I might be able to reach both of the targets.

If Arzani can keep getting 60 assists a season for the next 10 years, he will be 33 years old and have 800 assists in the bag. If he pushes on towards 38 years old, he might make it. Tight, but possible.

As for Henderson's 2KC, I got Hornby to 1K in 10 seasons. Henderson started at 16, so should be able to do 20 seasons if needed... And he's off to a better start than Hornby had.

I think it's on!

Edited October 9, 2019 by Scratch

[broodje kip]

🙄 I actually doubting the results of using defendsive but this insane!!!

[smoggy90]

What a start from Henderson! His attributes look sweet as well especially for his age.

I found the same with ghost injuries, nothing reported but their condition is often circa 50% and they miss a few games anyway.

Great work mate!

[Scratch]

7 minutes ago, Lord Danish said:

🙄 I actually doubting the results of using defendsive but this insane!!!

I think it's the whole combination of instructions I use. Not sure Defensive would work with other tactics.

For me, with WBs and no BPD or DLP or BBM, the play often starts down the side. With two CMs sitting in the middle they often just get the ball from the WB and pass to the Winger, which is exactly where I want it. They aren't getting forward themselves. Sometimes they go to the AP, but because I'm in Defensive mode, the AP isn't as far forward as he might otherwise be, so he's more likely to assist than score.

So I think for me Defensive means more goals for the striker and less for everyone else. And it does that by keeping the ball wide where crosses lead to goals and stopping the midfielders shooting etc.

Well that's my theory, I don't know for sure. But it does seem to work for me. That said, Hornby used the same tactic and he only got 60 goals in his first season, so it's not just the tactic, it's also the world class team around him. And the weak opposition. Etc.

And also, I'm on the pre winter update version. On the latest version, I only got 2 goals in the first season because the player was intimidated all the time...

[Kanegan]

Great start with Cahill 2.0. Arzani is plowing through as well. KIU.

[Scratch]

8 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

What a start from Henderson! His attributes look sweet as well especially for his age.

I found the same with ghost injuries, nothing reported but their condition is often circa 50% and they miss a few games anyway.

Great work mate!

Thanks! Yeah, I'm pretty happy with his attributes especially as a 17 year old. I did do a few cheat careers with other strikers with a large CA / PA gap so I'm not so surprised by the size of the improvements. Maybe a little bit better than I expected.

The key is to get them scoring, then they increase really quick. It's circular. Get them scoring = attribute improvement = more scoring = more attribute improvement. If you get the circle going, you're golden. And when there is a big CA / PA gap, it's really self starting as they upgrade just from training or getting on the pitch.

With Henderson, he started at 14 Aerial and was at 20 within the first couple of games. So the goals kept coming.

I'll be interested to see how much further he develops though as I think he burned through most of his potential already. Still some improve to come though.

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, Kanegan said:

Great start with Cahill 2.0. Arzani is plowing through as well. KIU.

Thanks mate! Out of everything, I'm most surprised by Arzani. Henderson isn't too much of a surprise as it matches what I've seen before, but I don't think I've ever had a player assist 60 in a season and that looks to be Arzani's norm. I am a little worried that as I upgrade the team I might disturb the balance and have some one else start taking his assists. I might have to downgrade some players if it comes to that! 😄

[Kanegan]

Just now, Scratch said:

Thanks mate! Out of everything, I'm most surprised by Arzani. Henderson isn't too much of a surprise as it matches what I've seen before, but I don't think I've ever had a player assist 60 in a season and that looks to be Arzani's norm. I am a little worried that as I upgrade the team I might disturb the balance and have some one else start taking his assists. I might have to downgrade some players if it comes to that! 😄

But it is no surprise for me as i had mentioned earlier that i used Arzani last year in a Socceroo save i was doing and he was brilliant. Shame the intl. assists can't be counted as he would get atleast 2 every match.

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, Kanegan said:

But it is no surprise for me as i had mentioned earlier that i used Arzani last year in a Socceroo save i was doing and he was brilliant. Shame the intl. assists can't be counted as he would get atleast 2 every match.

Yeah I know he worked wonders for you, but I just never got that much out of anybody! 

Want to know a secret? When I came up with this career, I thought I could count the ITN assists! Was a bit of a blow when I found out I couldn't, but I'd already committed to 1K assists. I probably never would have done that had I known they didn't count! 😂