Career Ian - The English Killer Challenge (Season 2)

[Ian]

I thought I’d have a go at one of the shorter challenges on vibe and the one I’ve chosen is The English Killer Challenge by @danovic78. It’s a nice looking challenge where you have to take charge of Olympiakos and bring over an English striker who will hopefully wreak havoc on the Greek league for two seasons. The striker can cost no more than £3m which is perfectly reasonable as the transfer budget available is not so great so chances are we’ll have to sell to buy regardless. 

The English striker I’ve chosen is.

Ivan Toney

There were a few players that came up in my search but this guy stood out and I knew he was the one I wanted if we could manage it. Manage it we could although he cost us the full £3m which we could only afford after we’d sold off a few players. As I said earlier, he stood out with good attributes for a fairly complete striker. His pace, shooting, movement, aerial and decisions are all at a good level and I like a decent number in aggression so he’ll be keen to give it to those pesky defenders and he’s reasonable there too at 14. Even his technique is good which is nice and the only negative I can find is his stamina which I’d ideally prefer to be slightly higher but you can’t have everything.

He started his career at Northampton Town in 2012 before moving on to Newcastle United in 2015 where he spent three years although for the majority of that time he was loaned out to various lower league clubs. He transferred to Peterborough United in League One in 2018 and has scored 35 goals in 73 games so we’ll have to see what kind of goal return we can get for him in the Greek league on FMM.

Olympiakos

Not going to say much here other than they are the most successful team in Greek football history with a huge trophy cabinet consisting of 44 top league titles and 27 Greek cups. The league title total sounds big but once you factor in that all other Greek teams combined have only won 39 then it becomes truly massive.

So it’s safe to say that we’ll be expected to win trophies but the challenge we face is trying to build a decent team to get goals out of our English striker whilst also getting the required results. It may sound simple but the budget as mentioned earlier is not overly great so some of our top players may have to leave to free up some money to use in other areas of the team which is risky especially as chances are I won’t have previously used the players I bring in and if they were to flop we could easily end up in trouble.

I’ll be back in a day or so with the first update so we can see how he and the club got on during the first season.

Thanks for reading.

[Mr Tree]

Nice! Particularly interested as apparently we were having a look at Toney (in real life) but got put off by his apparently £11m price tag!

[FuddledFox]

Very nice choice of player @Ian and I’m intrigued to see how this goes.

[Ashez]

Good luck!

I was eyeing this challenge up the other day tbf! 

[Woody]

Good luck.... Cant believe you got him for £3m though.... Bargain. 

You'll smash it though 😉

[shosky]

Great attributes for a paltry £3m. Good luck 

[Rob]

Love the player. Good luck and enjoy! 

[danovic78]

Nice to see someone have a go at this one. Good luck 👍

[Ian]

22 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Nice! Particularly interested as apparently we were having a look at Toney (in real life) but got put off by his apparently £11m price tag!

Thanks Tree, I actually hadn’t heard of him until I found him on the search but his Peterborough return seems decent although what he’d be like at a higher level is anyone’s guess.

19 hours ago, Foxy said:

Very nice choice of player @Ian and I’m intrigued to see how this goes.

Thank you Mr Fox, he looks good and hopefully he’ll be decent in Greece.

13 hours ago, Ashez said:

Good luck!

I was eyeing this challenge up the other day tbf! 

Thanks Ash, I was intrigued as to what sort of English strikers would be available and also the league appeals as I’ll be using players I’ve never used before.

10 hours ago, Woody said:

Good luck.... Cant believe you got him for £3m though.... Bargain. 

You'll smash it though 😉

Cheers Woody, it was touch and go as they wanted a bit more than £3m but I got them down to bang on the limit with a 50% sell on clause. I think the budget at the club is around £1m at the start so I’d sold a few to get him but you get a second budget a few weeks later which isn’t really big but it’s handy non the less.

8 hours ago, shosky said:

Great attributes for a paltry £3m. Good luck 

Thanks Shosky, he’s good and it’s those 14’s that I’m a sucker for as it only takes a few of those to increase to 15 green level and he’d look even more appealing. It’ll be interesting to see whether he does improve over the course of this.

8 hours ago, Rob said:

Love the player. Good luck and enjoy! 

Thanks Rob, it’s all about enjoyment for me and I have a feeling I will enjoy this one. I’ve got my system in place and this should make for a great test for that.

8 hours ago, danovic78 said:

Nice to see someone have a go at this one. Good luck 👍

Thanks Danovic, it’s a nice challenge using one of the new leagues so will be interesting to play out.

[Titjes]

Good luck @Ian 😉

[BatiGoal]

Toney's doing a respectable job for my current Norwich side 😉 goodluck! 

[Ian]

11 hours ago, Titjes said:

Good luck @Ian 😉

Thanks Titjes 😊

2 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Toney's doing a respectable job for my current Norwich side 😉 goodluck! 

Cheers Bati, I started this last week and had no idea that the next VPL challenge would see half of vibe using the player 😂

Can’t be helped but I suppose it’ll give a few an idea of what the player is like for themselves. 

[smoggy90]

Great player and good luck mate!

[Ian]

12 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great player and good luck mate!

Thanks Smoggy, first season update will be along shortly.

[Ian]

Season One

Here we go then, let’s see how Toney performed in Greece in his first season.

Transfers

We got around £1m to spend at the beginning of the season which was nowhere near enough to be able to afford Toney so players had to be sold. The most notable departure was Daniel Podence who went for decent money. The annoying thing is that you actually get a second transfer budget a few weeks later in Greece so I may have been able to keep him if I’d just held off for a bit. I sold a few others too so I could bring in a few players that better suited my system.

I had to spend £3m on Toney who was hopefully going to score goals so I thought I’d go fairly big on a provider in Eric Bautháec who cost £4.1m. Eric was a bit of a risk as he was 31 years old but his attributes looked good and I thought that if we could just get a year out of him it’d be worth it. Filippo De Col is an Italian right wing back available for free and is decent looking so he was brought in along with another freebie in the veteran French centre back Romain Brégerie. The free market was hit again with midfielder Marcel Büchel coming in, he’s one of those with nearly all blue attributes so I thought he’d make a decent back up option but he ended up not being needed. The other two incomings were both midfielders in Serbian Nenad Krsticic and Italian Daniele Dessena and they are both steady all round types. Nenad played a good few games and was an important member of the squad but Daniele just never got the chance due to others performing well. The system I’m using I find that the midfielders can be the hardest area to get right so I wanted to have plenty of options there and if my first choice guys had been poor then maybe Daniele would’ve stepped up but they weren’t so he ended up not being used much unfortunately.

Spoiler

Team

It was clear fairly early on that we were a strong team in this league and we were never in any danger of not winning the title. We weren’t prolific though and only managed to score 65 goals in the 36 league games so that’s one area where we’ll look to improve next season. We also had a fairly straight forward run to the Greek cup final where Ivan Toney came up with a hat trick against POAK to help us bring the cup home. Europe was never going to be easy and I just kind of looked at that as a bonus but we did qualify for the Champions League although perhaps dropping into the Europa may have been better for the level where we were at. Our group contained Juventus, Lokomotiv Moscow and Bayer Leverkusen and even though Juve made mincemeat of us we managed to win three games to qualify for the knockout stages in second place. We didn’t make it any further though as Red Bull Leipzig knocked us out in the first knockout stage but we weren’t disgraced by any stretch of the imagination.

Spoiler

Fixtures

Spoiler

Ivan Toney

Toney scored 56 goals in 55 games which whilst not being earth shattering is ok with me as he was above a goal a game ratio at the midway point but tailed off in the second half of the season when tiredness kicked in which was more than likely due to his poor stamina. I probably overplayed him too but it’s difficult to know what to do as you want to get him on the pitch as much as possible. He never improved in attributes apart from his aggression which was probably due to mentoring so it looks like this is him all set for the duration of this challenge. He also kicked off during the season wanting a move to a bigger club so when I got him to sign a new deal I had hoped that that would end those ambitions but not long after he declared his ambitions to move on again but he will just have to wait until the end of next season now. Hopefully it won’t hinder his performances.

Spoiler

Stats

You can see Toney scored a good percentage of our goals and also my other big signing was the main man when it came to assists which was pleasing. I don’t expect Eric to feature as much next year as he is declining but he’s been well worth his fee as far as I’m concerned.

Spoiler

Tactic

I thought I may as well share the tactic I used for this mainly because I already have as it’s practically the same tactic I used for my Moise Kean career last year. If you look at that career there is more information on it and the only difference from that is that here I used two central defenders instead of one of them being a ball playing defender.

Score

Season One

Ivan Toney (Goals): 56

League Points: 94

Goal Difference: 49

Total: 199 points

Thanks for reading.

[Rob]

Excellent return 

[smoggy90]

Great first season from Toney, great work mate!

[danovic78]

Great return in the first season, I did look at this one but the lack of financials did put me off.

I need to re-look at it and see how I can fit a tactic around the players already there.

[Ian]

Thank you @Rob, @smoggy90 and @danovic78 for the comments. It’s highly appreciated.

I was going to post the second season of this last weekend but didn’t get round to it so here I am now to round it off so we can see how Toney got on during the second season.

Season Two

Toney did okay last season without pulling up any trees so the hope was that we could improve the squad going into season two to hopefully assist him in getting more goals.

Transfers

There were a few players in the reserve squad who returned from being loaned out last year and a few were strikers and valued quite highly so they were sold off to raise funds. We tried to improve the squad with a few new signings and some young promising youngsters were loaned in so we ended up with a good blend of youth and experience.

Spoiler

Team

This season was very similar to the last in terms of results and trophies won but we were much more prolific and scored a fair few more goals including 92 in the league which whilst not being great was a good improvement on last years paltry 65. The Greek Cup was won again and we were knocked out of the Champions League at the same stage as last year at the first knockout round so the team isn’t quite ready to properly compete in Europe quite yet.

Spoiler

Fixtures

Spoiler

Ivan Toney

There was a slight improvement from Toney this season as he managed 60 goals in 52 games but I was a little disappointed that he didn’t really improve too much in attributes over the two seasons. I know he’s not really young but I had hoped and almost expected at least one of his 14’s to turn green but can’t be helped. He’s been a tank though as I don’t think he suffered an injury over the two season plus I used him in a recent VPL challenge and he was the same there too.

Spoiler

Stats

Toney scored a high percentage of our goals again this season as nobody else managed to get into double digits. Apart from my corner taker the assists were quite well spread throughout the team which was pleasing.

Spoiler

Manager

Spoiler

Score

Season One

Ivan Toney (Goals): 56

League Points: 94

Goal Difference: 49

Season Two

Ivan Toney (Goals): 60

League Points: 99

Goal Difference: 77

Total: 435 points

Upon looking at my managers profile it would appear that I’ve used superstar reputation for this, well I can’t be totally sure but I am world class now and revered so I’m guessing I have. I’ll leave it up to @danovic78 whether it qualifies for the leaderboard but regardless I’ve enjoyed the challenge and highly recommend it to others.

Thanks for reading.

 

[FuddledFox]

Whether or not this counts for the leaderboard I think Toney has done great for you especially when you consider you weren’t in a position to really challenge for European honours and there aren’t huge number of matches in Greek domestic football.

[Kanegan]

Great job mate. Toney did wonderfully there. 

[BatiGoal]

That's a healthy score, Ian, and interesting tactic too. 2 CBs and only concede 16 and 15 in the league. Those IWBs probably do much more defensive work than we expected them to do. That or great midfield cover to protect the back line 👍 

[shosky]

Great numbers there Ian. Will come back and say something on the tactics. 👍

[danovic78]

Good score here.

I will allow the reputation for this one and update the scoreboard shortly. Hard to beat I think.

I see you used Mac Allister but he didn't do that well? He has been amazing for me when I signed him. In my El Tigre save he is ripping it up in China. 

[Ian]

15 hours ago, Foxy said:

Whether or not this counts for the leaderboard I think Toney has done great for you especially when you consider you weren’t in a position to really challenge for European honours and there aren’t huge number of matches in Greek domestic football.

Thanks Mr Fox, yeah he did okay and I suppose the only thing I could’ve done differently was maybe going with a different system in the tough European games.

11 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Great job mate. Toney did wonderfully there. 

Thanks Kane, he’s seems a nice striker at the right level.

6 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

That's a healthy score, Ian, and interesting tactic too. 2 CBs and only concede 16 and 15 in the league. Those IWBs probably do much more defensive work than we expected them to do. That or great midfield cover to protect the back line 👍 

Thanks Bati, it works well with a strong team and the right players. With a mid table team it can properly fall apart.

5 hours ago, shosky said:

Great numbers there Ian. Will come back and say something on the tactics. 👍

Thanks Shosky, yes give it a try. There’s a few things that might improve it but I haven’y fully tested them such as a TM instead of P provided he’s beastly and maybe an AM instead of the AP. Also if the striker isn’t great all round or maybe young then IF’s instead of W’s can help as they support him better. I’m pretty sure IF’s are better when it comes to results as I’m finding the role so much more powerful than it was post winter update last year. Lots of things to test but the main thing with this is to use a powerful team as it just doesn’t suit lesser teams at all.

3 hours ago, danovic78 said:

Good score here.

I will allow the reputation for this one and update the scoreboard shortly. Hard to beat I think.

I see you used Mac Allister but he didn't do that well? He has been amazing for me when I signed him. In my El Tigre save he is ripping it up in China. 

Thanks Dan, Mac Allister looks a really good player and he did a little better than it shows there as he was mainly a back up to the guy who topped the assists so there were plenty of games where he came on late which probably hindered his rating. It was a bit of a waste really and I’ll definitely be keen to use him again especially on a longer save. 

[Rob]

Typical Ian challenge destruction!

[Woody]

Great score Ian and im glad it got on the leaderboard where it deserves 👍👍

[Ian]

5 hours ago, Rob said:

Typical Ian challenge destruction!

Thanks Rob, it went pretty well so I’m happy with it.

4 hours ago, Woody said:

Great score Ian and im glad it got on the leaderboard where it deserves 👍👍

Thank you Woody, highly appreciated.