Career Ian attempts the Lord Bendtner challenge (Season 3)

[samhardy]

Well done Ian. Unfortunately I can sense a major injury coming your way sooner or later though.

5 goals from Bendtner next season maximum.

[Ian]

16 hours ago, samhardy said:

Well done Ian. Unfortunately I can sense a major injury coming your way sooner or later though.

5 goals from Bendtner next season maximum.

Thank you Sam, just the sort of optimism I’d expect from you. 

[smoggy90]

Looking good here Ian, especially that first season. Good luck in the prem next season!

[Ian]

Season 3

The target for this season was to hopefully get Bendtner his 21 goals whilst keeping our results decent as things could easily go badly wrong on that front if Bendtner would prove to be a liability.

Lord Bendtner

Things started well with Nicklas scoring a goal in each of the first four games of the season as the team won three and drew one in all competitions. Unfortunately, things then turned sour for the team as we suffered three horrible defeats on the bounce and whilst Bendtner scored a further two goals in those games you could sense we were in trouble from a results perspective.

I just felt that it wasn’t going to work with the Lord up there on his own with wingers so had to get him more support even if that meant him scoring less goals. I would’ve went two up top but just didn’t have enough strikers so in the end I decided to switch my wingers to inside forwards as they had decent attributes for the role and hopefully this would offer more support for Nicklas up top.

Our results were steady from then on in as you’ll see later on in this update and although Bendtner wasn’t so prolific he still ticked along fairly well. Anyway, we reached the 21st of February with Bendtner needing two goals to reach his target in a very winnable game against Huddersfield at the Stadium of Light. He hadn’t hit many braces so I wasn’t really expecting him to get the job done today but after he scored an early goal that changed my thinking. The team were in fine form and ended up 4-0 up midway into the second half but Bendtner hadn’t scored again and it wasn’t looking like he would until the very last minute when we won a penalty. Now bear in mind I’m almost sure that the only penalties the Lord had missed up to this point, he’d followed up and scored from the rebound so I was sure he’d score and what a fitting way to do it with the last kick of a game at the Stadium of Light. Well unfortunately he did exactly what you’d expect he would in real life and blasted the penalty practically out of the stadium to my utter disgust.

So we had to wait a little longer for the all important goal but luckily it did finally come on the 21st March in an FA Cup quarter final tie against Bristol City at the Stadium of Light. Just before the hour mark he scored his 113th goal under my management with this being his 119th game so slightly less than a goal a game which was my original target but still half decent I think all things considered.

He went on to score a few more goals and here are his end of season numbers.

Team

Transfers

I brought a few new faces in with midfielder Semendo, winger Alioski and wing back Ribeiro being the main big money signings. 

Spoiler

Competitions

League Cup

We reached the quarter final where we faced off and lost to Manchester United at Old Trafford. This was a bonus competition as far as I was concerned, so I wasn’t too disheartened and the boys put in a fairly decent performance, just wasn’t our day.

League

As I mentioned further up, we started well but fell off a cliff so I had to change things up a bit. I did that and we were rather steady for the rest of the season and ended up finishing third behind Manchester City and Liverpool. There were only four points between us in third and Manchester United in sixth but I feel we deserved this after our fine response to those three consecutive horrible defeats early in the season.

FA Cup

We made rather hard work of the earlier rounds and needed replays in both the third and fourth round but we found a way through to set up a fifth round tie against local rivals Newcastle at St James’ Park. It was always going to be a difficult game and it certainly proved to be the case as there was nothing to separate the two teams over the 90 minutes so extra time was required. I had a feeling we were going to go home disappointed but then Ngbakoto came up with a goal to really raise our hopes. It was just a matter of trying to hang on at this stage and that’s what we did as although they had a goal disallowed, we were always fairly comfortable.

The next round was the game where Bendtner got his 113th goal and the game in question against Bristol City was a rather one sided affair as they couldn’t even muster a shot at goal.

Once I realised we were playing Manchester City in the semi, I lost most of my hope and was pretty sure that that would be the end of our run. The only hope I had was the fact that we could field our best side that was well rested whilst they had a tricky European tie to play three days before. We did alright and I’d say we were slightly the better side throughout and thoroughly deserved to go into extra time after playing out a pulsating 2-2 draw. The Lord came off the bench and scored the winning goal towards the end of extra time and that was that, we would be playing in the final.

Chelsea awaited us in the final and whilst I had slightly more hope than I had for the semi, I can’t say I expected us to win as we hadn’t done great in the league games again Chelsea. I should’ve had more faith in my boys as they set about the job perfectly and got a deserved goal towards the end of the first half scored by striker Ivan Toney. We defended well from then on in and went home with the cup to top of a brilliant first season back in the Premiership.

Original Players

I thought I’d show you a couple of the players we still have that were in the original starting squad in League One.

George Dobson

He’s still in my first choice team and has done a decent job as a deep playmaker in centre midfield. I wouldn’t say he is fantastic and I’d be looking to replace him in the first team next season if I were to continue but I can see him staying around as a squad option.

Jordan Willis

A decent defender who has never let me down. I’ve got him alongside Racic as my first choice pairing and I can see them both getting plenty of game time for a year or two yet.

We’ve also got Power, O’Nien and Embleton as squad members but they didn’t feature much this year and I’d be looking to offload them in the window if I were to continue, I'd say. Embleton in particular seems decent though and it’s only due to the fact I’m not using an attacking midfielder in my system that he hasn’t featured much.

Fixtures

Spoiler

Manager

Score

Lord Bendtner: 113 goals in 119 games

@Foxy could you please be so kind as to add my score onto the Lord Bendtner Challenge leaderboard and also my two promotions to the Warnock Promotion Challenge board.

Final Thoughts

I’m happy enough with the return as it was never going to be easy trying to get him goals in the Premiership with a newly promoted team. We’ve qualified for the Champions League and I may well carry this save on at a later date if I can think of a good challenge to add to it.

Thanks to all who’ve followed this.

[Titjes]

Well done mate, you gave Lord Bendtner a great goodbye

Can't wait see what yiu have planned next

[Kanegan]

Great results mate.Too bad i could not use him in my career.

[BatiGoal]

Congrats Ian. Interesting challenge here. Always enjoyed taking players like Bendtner who perhaps took a couple wrong turns in their careers and give em a proper goodbye. 

[Mr Tree]

Great effort that 👏

[CamelXCVII]

Hellish effort marra

[FuddledFox]

Very nice total @Ian well done. 

Nice to see Dobson still getting a game in the Premier League as well.

[smoggy90]

Great effort mate well done, so many good challenges knocking around at the minute and this is one of them.

[Ian]

23 hours ago, Titjes said:

Well done mate, you gave Lord Bendtner a great goodbye

Can't wait see what yiu have planned next

Thank you Titjes, he certainly did himself proud.

23 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Great results mate.Too bad i could not use him in my career.

Thanks Kane, I’m happy with it and it was a nice save to play with having a bit of lower league action in there.

22 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Congrats Ian. Interesting challenge here. Always enjoyed taking players like Bendtner who perhaps took a couple wrong turns in their careers and give em a proper goodbye. 

Cheers BG, he was always a player I thought had good ability but always seemed to disappoint. Still think if he’d have found the perfect club or manager for him he could’ve shone but it didn’t quite happen for him so nice that I can pretend I was that right manager here 😂

19 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Great effort that 👏

 

17 hours ago, CamelXCVII said:

Hellish effort marra

Thank you both, I had to lose focus on Bendtner at the end otherwise I think I would’ve got the dreaded sack. It was lucky that I found a better system quickly though.

17 hours ago, Foxy said:

Very nice total @Ian well done. 

Nice to see Dobson still getting a game in the Premier League as well.

Thank you Mr Fox, he’s been good and he might make a good fairly cheap option for premier league teams even if it is as a squad player.

6 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great effort mate well done, so many good challenges knocking around at the minute and this is one of them.

Thanks Smoggy, yes there are a lot of good challenges in the index at the moment. I’ll be looking to try another shortish one soon alongside my long Augusta challenge.

[Rob]

Well done!

[Ian]

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Well done!

Thank you Rob