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Career Beano’s 20: How it Went


FuddledFox
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Beano’s 20: Introduction

I wanted to do something to give me a break from my Augusta and Euro Tour saves so I decided to give my own Ronny’s 20 challenge a go. It should be a pretty quick save that hopefully will be done in one or two seasons and will probably just be one update.

This is the challenge.

https://fmmvibe.com/forums/topic/44538-ronny’s-20/?tab=comments#comment-401399

I needed a player that was 34 or older to try and score against 20 different teams in league games and there is some very interesting players that I could have gone for including Vagner Love, Zlatan and Jermaine Defoe just to name a few. Instead I decided to make this save a tribute to one of my all time favourite Oxford players who although he retired earlier in the season is still in the current DB at Hungerford Town.

Let me introduce you to James Ashley Constable aka Beano.

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James joined us initial on loan from Shrewsbury Town at the beginning of the 2008/09 season before making the move permanent the following summer. At the time he joined a club that after decades of mismanagement especially off the pitch was in the Conference and a mid table Conference team at that although once Chris Wilder took charge in December 2008 he began sowing the seeds of our eventual recovery and Beano was to be a integral part of that. Wider himself was quoted as saying when asked about signing him permanently he "epitomises what I am trying to build here at the club". The following season Wilder and Beano won us promotion and we established ourselves as a League 2 side. At the end of the 2013/14 season Beano was released and subsequently signed for Eastleigh but in his time at the club he scored 106 goals in 280 appearances which was only one goal from equalling Graham Atkinson’s all time goal record for the club.

He was never a better player than League 2 level and wouldn’t get into the current Oxford side but that didn’t stop the fans voting him into our team of the decade back in December. The reason is that he gave everything for the club, he didn’t just bring goals but he set the entire tone of the team with his attitude and will to win. Couple that with goals against our rivals Swindon who he also turned down the chance to sign for when The Fascist tried to prise him away and you have a player who played for the club in the same way that any fan would like to think we would if we had the chance. Since he retired he has taken up a role at Oxford behind the scenes and is often seen at our matches as well.

In FMM20 he is at Hungerford who he started the season with before deciding to hang up his boots early on in the season. I could say that time hasn’t been kind to his attributes but he isn’t that much worse than he was in his peak albeit his physicals have diminished. He is still aggressive and has that trademark teamwork but a lack of pace and movement may hamper him as he looks to score against 20 different teams.

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Once I had chosen Beano as my challenger I needed to work out where I would take him to try and complete the challenge. The rules state it must be a league with 20 teams in it which I initial thought would hamper me as I wasn’t sure there were many 20 team leagues in the game although a quick search revealed a couple options.

  • I could give him a shot at the big time in La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 or even the Premier League.
  • I could go lower league which excludes any English leagues but did give me the option of the Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian 2nd Divisions, or a step down again to Serie C or Spanish 2nd Division B.

In the end I opted for Spain and there 3rd tier as Beano still won’t be a good player at that level but he will have a better chance of getting some goals and setting if not an outstanding score for the leaderboard at least a reasonable one. The division is split into 4 20 team leagues and the top 4 go into an inter league playoff system for promotion which will give me so,e extra games if I can qualify in which to tick off some teams.

My club choice was Gimnastic Tarragona who are a club in Catalonia about an hour west of Barcelona. This choice was based solely on the fact that it is a city I have visited a couple of times whilst on holiday. They also have a nice stadium that as soon as I sign Beano will be full and rocking each home game as the fans flock to see there new hero play.

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The club has a decent budget and a few decent looking players in the squad so hopefully I can get the team playing well and creating lots of chances.

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I plan on using a 4-2-4 which I have used to great success in last years game and this one. It creates a lot of chances for the front players and although it spreads the goals around it should yield good results on the pitch as well as presenting Beano with chances that is then up to him to take. Remember Beano only needs one goal a game against 20 different teams so he doesn’t need to score loads of goals in single games but just to be getting enough chances to take at least one.

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Beano set me back a whole £5k so there was a lot of budget left although I made as much selling players as I spent and really utilised the loan market to boost numbers and quality. There will be a few young un’s that you will recognise in this list like Doku and Kana but they are a long way from there peak years.

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I have everything set and hopefully this won’t take me more than two seasons to complete so I will be back in a few days to tell you how it all went.

Thank you for reading and all comments are appreciated.

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Good luck! 

I vaguely remember him as that's around the period I went to matches often, that's the season we had Grant Holt tearing it up though. 

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1 hour ago, Ashez said:

Good luck! 

I vaguely remember him as that's around the period I went to matches often, that's the season we had Grant Holt tearing it up though. 

I’m glad you had Holt otherwise we wouldn’t have got Beano.

15 minutes ago, samhardy said:

What is your cat called?

Mrs F has two cats and one mysteriously managed to find itself being called Beano.

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Oh you remember @Foxy's pets name no problem hey @samhardy 😠😠

4 minutes ago, Foxy said:

I’m glad you had Holt otherwise we wouldn’t have got Beano.

Okay now you've got me in footballing butterfly effect thinking.....Oh God. 

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8 hours ago, Ian said:

I enjoyed the little bit of history and whilst he looks a bit rough in places hopefully he’ll still have a few goals left in him in the right league. Good luck Beano!

There will be a few defenders who faced him that will testify he was a bit rough!

8 hours ago, samhardy said:

I like cats that’s why, dogs not so much but Alan might be ok I guess 🤔

I will include a nice picture of Beano for you in the update.

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I have started this one too but gone a big higher up the leagues. I had funchoosing my player. There is some rich pickings from the old boys in the DB

Good luck 👍

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9 hours ago, danovic78 said:

I have started this one too but gone a big higher up the leagues. I had funchoosing my player. There is some rich pickings from the old boys in the DB

Good luck 👍

You are right there is a few former greats in the DB that would be really fun to use in this challenge but I couldn’t turn down the chance to give Beano a farewell. I look forward to seeing who you went with.

9 hours ago, Woody said:

Good luck dude.... Im sure you'll do this in quick fashion 😉

Hopefully it won’t take long.

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Doh. I mistyped that. I meant:

58 minutes ago, Rob said:

Why is Constable’s nickname not the obvious one by the way?

I love Plug!!!

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2 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Quality story mate, I appreciate stuff like that from the English lower leagues. Looking forward to seeing how you get on - good luck!

I think every club has had these sorts of players at some time that give everything for the team in the way a fan would.

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Beano’s 20: How it Went

It’s about time I updated this but first here is the promised Pussy action so that @samhardy doesn’t need to scroll any further into the post.

Spoiler

Introducing Beano the cat who was trying to stay awake as he posed for this photo.

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Beano was signed for £5k from Hungerford and straight away he was on “it” in training which was great to see.

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First Half of The Season

He started the season well and was getting on the scoresheet  nice and consistently straight away. The beauty of this challenge is once he gets a goal against a team he needs to tick off you can sub him ready for the next game to avoid injuries or fatigue although the Spainish 3rd tier doesn’t have an enormous amount of games with just one cup unless you finished high enough in the league the previous season to get into the CdR which Tarragona hadn’t. The only cup is the Federation Cup which I rested Beano in but I only got through a couple of rounds before we went out to Andorra anyway.

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In the league though it all was going well with just the single loss and 4 draws which left us 6 points clear at the top.

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All that really matters is how many different games Beano scored in though and it was a decent return as he netted in 11 of the games meaning after 19 games he was over halfway to the 20 he needs. It could have been better of course as he might have scored in all 19 games and only needed one more club to be finished but that is a little far fetched :P

Here is the 11 clubs he scored against and of course he still has another game against the teams he hasn’t yet burst the net of. Under the spoiler is the evidence.

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Spoiler

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With 8 teams left to play I was hoping he could tick off all or most of them before the season end. The sensible thing to do would be to rest Beano in the games against teams he had scored against but I didn’t bother with that as I wanted him to play as often as possible and I don’t really care about his final score in the challenge as this save is just about using one of my favourites before he leaves the DB.

We won the league which with the signings I made and the good players already at the club wasn’t a surprise. 
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I can’t yet claim a promotion on the Neil Warnock Challenge Leaderboard yet though and that is because there is a convoluted playoff system in the Spanish 3rd tier. The 4 teams which win the groups go into a semi final where you play another of the group winners for promotion with the winner both going up to the 2nd tier but also progressing to the final to play for the overall 3rd tier title.

I knew this before I started and it was one of the reasons I picked this level as it means I potentially would play 21 different teams (twice each) over the season if I made the final and could actually complete the challenge in one season.

As it was I did win the overall title and got promoted but could Beano get himself in position to take advantage of the playoffs and complete the challenge?

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The answer was no and that was because his 2nd half of the season form wasn’t as good as the first and by the end of the regular games he couldn’t have got completed even if he scored against both teams in the playoffs which he didn’t anyway.

He only added 4 more ticks onto the list meaning he scored against 15 different teams in the first season and would need 5 goals in the tough 2nd division next season.

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Spoiler

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He ended the season with 22 goals and luckily only some minor decline in his attributes.

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Season 2

The temptation was to move to a different club back in the 3rd tier as it might be easier for Beano to score but there wasn’t the jobs available worth taking in the different groups and I wanted to carry on a bit longer with Tarragona.

Despite only needing 5 more goals to finish this save and no intention of carrying on when he gets them I took my transfer business seriously and made sure I put together a competitive team in the hope that it would create more chances for Beano. I see @Mr Tree bigging up The Bees a lot on here so I felt that a couple of there players on loan would really get the job done quicker.

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I was worried that the step up in league would make it nearly impossible for him to score but he actually did surprisingly well perhaps because the overall quality of the squad was much higher and they created more chances.

He completed the 5 teams he needed in 8 games and we sat in 2nd when he had finished.

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He of course blanked in a few games and he was helped along by some penalties as well but nonetheless he got the 20 clubs completed by early October in the 2nd season which is ok by me and better than I thought really.

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Spoiler

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This meant he had scored in total 28 goals for the club and it had taken him 51 games to score against 20 unique clubs although I could have made that total of games lower if I had just not played him but that would have been a bit boring.

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That brings to an end what was a fun save to play over a few hours last weekend and it was nice to give Beano a final send off before he leaves the DB this spring.

Thanks for reading and all comments are appreciated.

 

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Nice going, decent goals to game record too 👍

My first effort was doomed as I forgot to record the league games in the first season so I have started another attempt this in the lower leagues but in a different country. Hope to post soon when complete. 

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