Career No One Left Behind - A Koita 1KC [ABANDONED]

[Scratch]

After a couple of false starts, I've settled on my next career: a simple 1KC.

That's right. Not a 2KC. No assists challenge thrown in. Just a 1KC. That's partly because a) I'm not up for another 19 season long save ; and b) I've upgraded to the latest version and I'm not sure my tactic will work, especially with the difficulty of training Aerial these days.

As for who the player and team are... Well, there is a strong clue who the player is in the title. And the club is one I've used before (no, not Celtic for a change). So, I reckon some of you will get it pretty easily. We'll see...

Edited August 13, 2020 by Scratch

[Xjfbdh]

Not sure what team or player you're using but judging by your last career, you'll prob get it done in no time

[Kun Aguero]

Is this the Beijing 1kc? 🤔

No idea with the player tho, good luck, you will easily smash the challenge. 😁

[BatiGoal]

Koïta 😂 Newcastle 👍 

[Scratch]

And we have a winner.... Take a bow Mr @BatiGoal! No way to keep secrets from you!

Koita of course got left behind in my 2KC+1KC+Assists1KC career, so I need to go back and get him and make sure he completes a 1KC. And I generally have a Newcastle career each version, but haven't had one this time. Feels good to be back!

 

@Kun Aguero I started a 1KC with Beijing, using Adam Armstrong (my first ever 1KC player back in 17) and got a few months into it. He was doing well - a bit over a goal a game - but it didn't feel right somehow. Then I realised that I'd rather be back in England, where I hadn't played this year. I might go back to Beijing at some point, but maybe for something shorter than a 1KC. There's no doubt it's a great place for scoring goals and I like it because I lived near there, but it feels very different with 2 clear levels of players. I've mostly been managing in England since CM2 so a bit set in my ways!  

Anyway, when I decided I wanted to play in England, I tried a couple things out: a) start at the bottom (done it before, liked it, but this time couldn't get excited by the level of players); and b) Oxford United which is my 2nd club - but right about then I had the Koita / Newcastle idea and I knew I had to do that.

So there we are. I'm currently pulling Newcastle to shreds (the squad is always terrible in FMM, which I suppose is fair). Only about 5 or 6 players are going to survive in the squad. I'm calling on old reliable players like Palacios, Moro, Marin, Ajer, McKenna etc. There are a couple I used in the 2KC (like Ajer), but I spent a long time looking at Vignato before deciding No and that I shouldn't have too many of the same players.

 

@Xjfbdh - thanks, but this one will be tougher as the EPL is much tougher than the SPL and the last one really worked on the Aerial 20 thing. I'm training him in Aerial and found a mentor for him that will teach him that, but we'll have to see how far that takes him. Still... I have done okay in the EPL in the past, I think the really good players get to their maximum much quicker (sometimes in the SPL I think they never make it there). So I'm hoping to make it by the time he's 30, but we'll have to see.

Oh... and no ITN management this time around. The only way I could get Koita in the first place was to use the original DB (he seems to have slipped out in the Winter update) and to load Scotland. He doesn't appear if I only load England. Then to get Mali as an ITN side, I needed to load up France and Belgium as well. My phone is not new anymore, so I decided to ditch ITN... 

 

[Kanegan]

Good luck mate. This time you should get Koita to a 1KC.

[gunnersaur]

Good luck man ... Shouldn't get left behind this time 😂

[Cockers2505]

Well @Scratch strikes again, you know that you will reach 1KC to quickly, and then end up aiming for 2KC 🤣

[Scratch]

On 22/03/2020 at 04:03, Kanegan said:

Good luck mate. This time you should get Koita to a 1KC.

Thanks mate. Should be possible, but a much slower start in the EPL than with Celtic. 12 games and 4 goals... 😯

Still on the plus side, it looks like the Aerial bug is back in the latest version, at least when a mentor is used (as discussed in the General Discussion thread) and he has improve 6 points in 2 updates. So it's looking like I won't have to find a new tactic... Not sure how I feel about that...

[Scratch]

On 22/03/2020 at 11:52, gunnersaur said:

Good luck man ... Shouldn't get left behind this time 😂

Thanks mate - hopefully not! I let him down last time and no mistake...

[Scratch]

15 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Well @Scratch strikes again, you know that you will reach 1KC to quickly, and then end up aiming for 2KC 🤣

Thanks buddy. I was going to say not much hope of that, but if this Aerial bug really is back in this version, then actually... you never know! 😄

But against that, I'm not sure I have the stomach for a full on 2KC...

[smoggy90]

Good luck mate, look forward to this!

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Good luck mate, look forward to this!

Thanks mate. It's fun again! Ripping up a team, bringing youngsters through... Hope I keep the enthusiasm for whole 1K...

[Rob]

I'd be disappointed if this wasn't anot her 2k. Nah, seriously, good luck and enjoy.

[Woody]

On 21/03/2020 at 14:06, Scratch said:

And we have a winner.... Take a bow Mr @BatiGoal! No way to keep secrets from you!

Koita of course got left behind in my 2KC+1KC+Assists1KC career, so I need to go back and get him and make sure he completes a 1KC. And I generally have a Newcastle career each version, but haven't had one this time. Feels good to be back!

 

@Kun Aguero I started a 1KC with Beijing, using Adam Armstrong (my first ever 1KC player back in 17) and got a few months into it. He was doing well - a bit over a goal a game - but it didn't feel right somehow. Then I realised that I'd rather be back in England, where I hadn't played this year. I might go back to Beijing at some point, but maybe for something shorter than a 1KC. There's no doubt it's a great place for scoring goals and I like it because I lived near there, but it feels very different with 2 clear levels of players. I've mostly been managing in England since CM2 so a bit set in my ways!  

Anyway, when I decided I wanted to play in England, I tried a couple things out: a) start at the bottom (done it before, liked it, but this time couldn't get excited by the level of players); and b) Oxford United which is my 2nd club - but right about then I had the Koita / Newcastle idea and I knew I had to do that.

So there we are. I'm currently pulling Newcastle to shreds (the squad is always terrible in FMM, which I suppose is fair). Only about 5 or 6 players are going to survive in the squad. I'm calling on old reliable players like Palacios, Moro, Marin, Ajer, McKenna etc. There are a couple I used in the 2KC (like Ajer), but I spent a long time looking at Vignato before deciding No and that I shouldn't have too many of the same players.

 

@Xjfbdh - thanks, but this one will be tougher as the EPL is much tougher than the SPL and the last one really worked on the Aerial 20 thing. I'm training him in Aerial and found a mentor for him that will teach him that, but we'll have to see how far that takes him. Still... I have done okay in the EPL in the past, I think the really good players get to their maximum much quicker (sometimes in the SPL I think they never make it there). So I'm hoping to make it by the time he's 30, but we'll have to see.

Oh... and no ITN management this time around. The only way I could get Koita in the first place was to use the original DB (he seems to have slipped out in the Winter update) and to load Scotland. He doesn't appear if I only load England. Then to get Mali as an ITN side, I needed to load up France and Belgium as well. My phone is not new anymore, so I decided to ditch ITN... 

 

Best of luck mate...couldnt of picked a better team too 👍😉

[samhardy]

After seeing the club of choice I might have to break out the ancient broken spine war dance 😳

[FuddledFox]

19 minutes ago, samhardy said:

ancient broken spine war dance

Had that ever worked?

[samhardy]

2 hours ago, Foxy said:

Had that ever worked?

Inconclusive.

[Scratch]

On 24/03/2020 at 06:23, Rob said:

I'd be disappointed if this wasn't anot her 2k. Nah, seriously, good luck and enjoy.

Haha, thanks mate. Too late for this one, but I'm thinking about a twist on the 1KC where you have a limited number of seasons, eg: 10 seasons to complete a 1KC... A one day cricket (or 20-20) version if you like... Or maybe 500 goals in 6 seasons. I don't know, haven't thought about it enough, but will probably do something like that sooner or later. The open ended careers kill me at the moment. I love them at the beginning, but by season 15 I've had more than enough...

added 0 minutes later

On 24/03/2020 at 07:51, Woody said:

Best of luck mate...couldnt of picked a better team too 👍😉

Yeah mate, 10 Champions League wins in a row coming up! 👍

[Scratch]

On 24/03/2020 at 08:37, samhardy said:

After seeing the club of choice I might have to break out the ancient broken spine war dance 😳

You can dance if you want to. As a standard precaution, we've deployed a counter dance 

Though you might be too young to get that! 🤣 It's the safety dance

[Woody]

3 hours ago, Scratch said:

Haha, thanks mate. Too late for this one, but I'm thinking about a twist on the 1KC where you have a limited number of seasons, eg: 10 seasons to complete a 1KC... A one day cricket (or 20-20) version if you like... Or maybe 500 goals in 6 seasons. I don't know, haven't thought about it enough, but will probably do something like that sooner or later. The open ended careers kill me at the moment. I love them at the beginning, but by season 15 I've had more than enough...

added 0 minutes later

Yeah mate, 10 Champions League wins in a row coming up! 👍

Nice one 👍

[Scratch]

Update - Season 1

I traded winning everything, every year (yawn), in my last save, for struggling with Newcastle in the EPL. And a struggle it was - I spent the first half of the season under the threat of being sacked. We eventually got some form going but it was far harder than I thought it would be.

The cause: As per normal, I shredded the team and got a bunch of young hopefuls that will be great in a year or two - but while they'd be good enough to cruise the SPL with Celtic, they weren't ready for the EPL.

Many did develop into good EPL players over the course of the season and we were much better in the second half, but in hindsight, I should have bought/kept some more experienced players.

I should also mention that I got a new phone midway through and the screenshots are a bit weird, with the rounded edges showing on the left hand end, but not the right hand end (they are rounded in real life). It also had some black space where the selfie camera is, but I trimmed that off. They aren't quite as clear as the old camera so I'll have to look into that.

 

Transfers

Spoiler

Newcastle's squad is truly mediocre, so I sold as many of them as I could. I wanted to keep Saint-Maximin to see what he could do, but I had several promising youngsters for that position. Likewise, I was planning on keeping Shelvey, but we ended up with too many good young midfielders, so he went too. I even sold Andy Carroll when he mucked about at training.

I really only kept Lascelles, the Longstaffs, Dubravka, Yedlin, Matt Ritchie (although he's declining so I should have cashed in) and Almiron (a mistake, didn't fit the left winger role, didn't perform).

Coming in were a whole bunch of good youngsters, many of whom you will know: Fati, Tonali, Palacios, Moro, Ajer, McKenna, Nubel, Marin, Henry, Miranda, etc. Most of these will be top top class in a couple of seasons. I had a run at Havertz and was eyeing off Sancho and Bailey and others, but ultimately these players just cost a little too much and the youngsters I have will be just as good as them in a year or two.

The fans seem nervous about this approach but Mike Ashley loves me. What he doesn't know though is I'm not buying these players to cash in on later, I'm buying them so we can establish a truly world class team. What he doesn't know won't hurt him hey? The fans will have the last laugh in the end...

 

Results

As I mentioned above, it was a tough season, with a horrible start, but we got a run on at the end.

For some reason the board's minimum target was European qualification and we were nowhere near it for most of the season. However we got closer towards the end of the season. With 3 games to go, we were 4 points behind Wolves in 7th:

Spoiler

We beat Chelsea 3-1 away against all the odds, then Norwich 3-0 at home, while Wolves lost 2-0 to Burnley, then drew 1-1 with Man City. That left us a point ahead with with a game to play:

Spoiler

If we could win away to Man Utd, we'd finish 7th. They were away to Leicester, which wouldn't be an easy game but it was in our hands! At half time we were 1-0 up (so were Wolves):

Spoiler

But they smashed us in the second half to win 3-1. 🙁

Spoiler

Wolves let a goal in to Leicester however, meaning that at the end of the game (and the season), things stood like this:

Spoiler

Yes! 7th on goal difference! FMM hasn't been this exciting for me for quite a while! Wait a minute... Do you notice something in the final table:

We've got the "7th" highlighted in blue, but we don't have one of those qualified for Europe badges... What the <beep> FMM? So all that for nothing? Or is it just because we have to play qualifiers over the summer or something? Hoping it's that!

With all this focus on the league, I forgot to mention we made the semi final of the League Cup where Chelsea beat us 2-1 over the two legs:

Spoiler

and we made the final of the FA Cup, where Liverpool beat us 1-0:

Spoiler

So near, yet so far... But we'll soon be winning these regularly without much thought, so I really enjoyed it. Took a lot more care with games and played much more slowly than I will be in a few seasons.

 

Settling In

Things didn't get off to a good start - Koita wanted to leave as soon as he got here!

I bought in Marega as a back up striker, hoping another Malian would help him settle, but I guess that's a full game only thing. Then he got disruptive in training:

Basically, things weren't great:

However, he started to level up a little and gradually settled into the team.

 

Mentoring

We got in an experienced player, Pavoletti, to become his mentor and help improve his 'heading of the ball'. I thought about using Andy Carroll, but a) Koita was already relaxed and Carroll would have just made that worse and b) Carroll was only going to help him with Aggression, not Aerial.

I've gotten better at picking Aerial mentors - someone with very good Aerial, but not Aggression or Teamwork (or they will want to train people in that) - so I looked around and Pavoletti fit the bill. Sure enough, he was happy to help out. And sure enough Koita's Aerial value did improve a lot.

That's something that actually confused me a lot. I was expecting Aerial to be super hard to train, but he went up 7 points in 3 updates (then had 2 updates where it didn't improve). In case you missed it, we discussed it in General Discussion (you'll need to read down that page) and it seems the Aerial bug still exists in some form in the latest version.

Pavoletti also helped him with Decisions and Teamwork, but eventually started to decline as a player. Initially Koita was happy to keep going, but by May Koita had realised he was better than Pavoletti and they were no longer working well together:

You know the drill: you abandon the mentoring, the young guy hates the old guy, the old guy is oblivious to it but has to go for team harmony (want a bargain on an aging striker? Anyone? Call me!). Pavoletti did give Koita a nice parting gift:

One of my big worries with Koita was the Relaxed personality, but the break up with Pavoletti taught him how to be more Professional and now he is just Normal. So although it ended badly, I got everything I could possible hope for out of it.

 

Development

Koita started off fairly as a a decent prospect, but someone far from ready to start in the EPL:

He had around 5 updates throughout the season, ending up looking like this:

Nice improvement! But I'm hoping there's a lot more to come - there should be to judge from the % increases after each game.

 

Injuries

He had a 3 week injury early in the season and that was it:

 

Bids

Around the end of the season, there were several bids for Koita, always lead by Arsenal:

I offered him a new contract on the first one and then rejected the rest. He's happy enough to stay here for now, but I need to improve this team quickly before he is tempted away.

 

Goals

This graph sums up his season:

The first half was a struggle, with goals hard to come by (he only had 4 goals from his first 13 games for eg):

Then in February, something clicked (probably just he levelled up enough to cut it at EPL level) and the goals started to flow a bit more regularly. He certainly had goalless games after that, but always looked more likely to score.

He ended up scoring 27 goals in 39 games:

A slow start, but there's more to come.

 

Progress

Season	Goals
01	27
Total	27 / 1000

 

A Note To Those Seeking Success

I get asked a lot for my tactic. Hopefully after seeing this people will realise that either a) my tactic is not so good after all; or b) there's a lot more involved than a tactic.

This is a very slow start - or is it? If I'd been playing in Scotland, he probably would have scored 50 or 60. Unuvar scored 44 by comparison, but he was only 16. In FMM19, Hornby was 19 years old (like Koita) and scored 60.

If I look at my Newcastle careers, last year I had a player who was intimidated by the EPL and only scored 2 in his first season! Yes, 2. Then a couple of years ago, Pinamonti scored 25 from 38 games which is very similar to Koita.

So, this is just par for the course for me. My tactic is not that special, a lot of it comes down to the relevant strength of my player and my team to the league. In season one, my player and team are not strong enough for the EPL, but in a few seasons they will both be truly world class and the goals will flow.

So persist. Keep going, build your team, don't give up. There may be some people out there with super tactics, but you can still hit big numbers with an average tactic if you pick the right players and the right league and keep building. End rant (sorry)!

 

Looking Forward

Nothing else to do but to keep levelling up the team and watch Koita grow into a goal scoring legend!

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Scratch

[gunnersaur]

Good start for the premier league ... I find it to be one of the harder league tactics wise especially for scoring with 1 player hopefully you kick on next season

[Scratch]

9 minutes ago, gunnersaur said:

Good start for the premier league ... I find it to be one of the harder league tactics wise especially for scoring with 1 player hopefully you kick on next season

Thanks! For me, I just keep building and building the team until they are unstoppable in any league, then the goals start flowing. But takes a bit longer to get there in the Premier League.

[Kanegan]

Good start mate. Give him a couple of seasons and he will be banging them like no other. I have pretty fond memories of Newcastle in last edition in my Pensioner's save so i hope you take them to the top. 😁

[Kun Aguero]

Great to see you finishing above Utd 😁, great start for Koita. A few more seasons for him and those young lads to develop, and they will be storming EPL soon.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Kun Aguero

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Kanegan said:

Good start mate. Give him a couple of seasons and he will be banging them like no other. I have pretty fond memories of Newcastle in last edition in my Pensioner's save so i hope you take them to the top. 😁

Thanks mate - I'm sure it will come. I remember winning 10 CLs in a row with Newcastle or something like that in the Pinamonti 1.5KC a couple of years ago. Once you level up your squad, FMM is too easy... I have mixed feelings about that! 🙂

[Scratch]

13 minutes ago, Kun Aguero said:

Great to see you finishing above Utd 😁, great start for Koita. A few more seasons for him and those young lads to develop, and they will be storming EPL soon.

Thanks mate! The other lads are levelling up all over the place! We're like a Tsunami! The Premier League better watch out... 😄

[smoggy90]

Great start mate! I think that’s why we see quite a few unfinished careers because people see the numbers you can hit from season 4/5 onwards but often don’t realise the struggle in the first few seasons to get there. Ie. Building your squad, waiting for your players to mature and develop etc. It’s a game of patience at the start.

[Rob]

Excellent start

added 0 minutes later

2 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great start mate! I think that’s why we see quite a few unfinished careers because people see the numbers you can hit from season 4/5 onwards but often don’t realise the struggle in the first few seasons to get there. Ie. Building your squad, waiting for your players to mature and develop etc. It’s a game of patience at the start.

Totally agree with this