Career The recall challenge: Floundering Flemish (finished)

[Dagion]

Hey guys,

Since I finished my long save in the Netherlands I was looking for a short challenge after finishing the in-game challenges. Some of the stuff on these boards looks quite hard, hence the word challenge I guess..

So, glad I was my fellow countryman @BatiGoal introduced a challenge even I could complete: The Recall Challenge!

Recall Challenge explained

Not sure how to link it nicely in the post but shortly explained you have to recall a loaned out player and use him to gain as much points as you can. Points are gained by appearances, goals, assists, cards and average ratings.

One of the twists is, once a player is used nobody else can use him again to get on the leaderboard.

So, with that in mind I looked for my regular favourites, only to find out they didn't have a recall option. Ah well, then we just go look at all the players who are loaned and see.

Hmm.. not too many have an option, at least not in the leagues I like to play in..

But in the end, I found a player who looked like me: okay, but not that good and probably nobody else attempting this challenge will think: "God, I wish Dagion picked some other player because damn, that is one good looking prospect".

Guess we are made for each other, especially since I usually just pick some tactic from this board and plug along. Well, not this time so we'll see what easy to beat score we are setting!

The title of my post is a hint regarding the player, not the league and I doubt the player will consider himself Flemish but let's call that some artistic freedom.

The club I'm playing as has never been relegated and are known as cupfighters so they seem the perfect accompaniment for my tactical genius yet to be discovered. Thanks for reading guys!

There won't be many updates since it is just one season long and I'm already in November I think.

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by Dagion

[gunnersaur]

Is the team FC Utrecht? Can't get the player though

[Dagion]

Well, that was pretty quick! Yes the team is FC Utrecht, saw they had a player who could be recalled. Used to live in Utrecht and I love playing in the Eredivisie so that was settled

The player in question is Othman Boussaid, who was at loan with NAC Breda. He looks okay, mental attributes are fine and I hope that 15 for Aggression gets me some cards! Shooting and creativity a little bit low, should be interesting with free kicks..

[BatiGoal]

5 hours ago, Dagion said:

Hmm.. not too many have an option, at least not in the leagues I like to play in..

You're right, there's very few around in Holland. Before I posted the challenge I told myself that if I couldn't find at least 50 players in the next hour with the recall option I wouldn't post the challenge at all. I found 64 scattered around all available leagues at the so called "bigger" clubs. This leads me to believe there's still a whole bunch I haven't found, like the player you're using 👍 great club too! 

The challenge starts at finding a solid man for the job and you did that. I wish you the best of luck with the next part of the challenge, filling up his history page with numbers. 

[Dagion]

5 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

You're right, there's very few around in Holland. Before I posted the challenge I told myself that if I couldn't find at least 50 players in the next hour with the recall option I wouldn't post the challenge at all. I found 64 scattered around all available leagues at the so called "bigger" clubs. This leads me to believe there's still a whole bunch I haven't found, like the player you're using 👍 great club too! 

The challenge starts at finding a solid man for the job and you did that. I wish you the best of luck with the next part of the challenge, filling up his history page with numbers. 

Thanks! Found some others too, maybe I'll have another crack at it. Surely you can find others if you load up other leagues, wrote some down to be sure.

It's just a short challenge, nice to do in between. Filling up his page will be difficult, since it's one of my first attempts at my own tactic. Results are good, with quite a bit of them being lucky, seems like I kind of got it in regard to getting the most out of one player but he just isn't that good I think. When he is tired I play someone else there and they seem to do better. Overall tactic can be improved I guess but it's a fun season and Boussaid is getting the highest rating I think.

Also, the difference in quality between my first choice players and second string is too big I guess. Strikers and wingers are okay but midfield and left back is too thin.

Will try to update from my laptop so I can get the screenshots in the right place, but here are two just for fun!

[Dagion]

Allright, first update here we go!

As previously said, I took over FC Utrecht for the challenge. The team is pretty nice actually, just a fair reflection of their performance in real life I guess, where they knocked out Ajax in this year's cup semifinal and were sitting in 6th in the Eredivisie.

Quite some talent there (Gyrano Kerk, Václav Cerný), mixed with experience (Willem Janssen, Lamine Sané). Add in a talented midfield with ex-Feyenoord player Simon Gustafson and ex-PSV's Adam Maher and Bart Ramselaar and it should be a solid base for this challenge. Notable other players would be Sean Klaiber, Dario Dumic, Jean-Christophe Bahebeck and Jeroen Zoet who is on loan from PSV.

They had some other players on loan too, but we sent them back since we recalled the star of this story, or at least the main character: Othman Boussaid. The loanees wouldn't be getting much playing time anyway (two of them being wingers), except for Jeroen Zoet that is. Maybe should have kept Hoogma for defence also but that is in hindsight. Stats from Othman Boussaid as posted before at the start when he was on loan at NAC Breda

First things first, tactics! Normally I just look at the squad I have and pick one of the more known tactics on these boards and tinker very little with it. Not this time, time to build your own you lazy bastard!

Playing in the Eredivisie, I went for a traditional 4-3-3, or normally described as 4-1-2-2-1 since there are two wingers or inside forwards, and one midfielder in front of defence. Boussaid looks like a winger, but normally my IF's do better so that will be his role from the left side, regardless of his lack of shooting. To get maximum attempts at scoring the AMR will be a classical wingman. Striker role I tinkered a bit with, TM, DLF or AF, still not sure about that for maximum assists or goals.

Midfield started out as: AP-BWM-AP with a retrained Klaiber. Then I tried: AP-DLP-AP, but that seemed a little bit leaky, especially when the first string was out. So I finally settled at AP-DLP-CM.

Defence started with WB-BPD-BPD-WB, but my defenders weren't that good, so it changed quite a bit actually in the first half of the season, but recently I'm employing WB-CD-CD-FB. Goalie started out as a SK, since I think that is more the traditional role in the Dutch Divisions but Jeroen Zoet was slower than Willem Janssen so we changed it back to a traditional role. When I rest one of the CB's, the right role may change to BPD (Willem Janssen or St. Jago).

For the instructions I went attacking, since I thought we should be in the top 5 of the division, balanced width (don't know?), fast tempo (started as normal but my wingers didn't seem that effective then). Creative freedom I set to balanced, since my midfield is creative, the rest not so much.

Defensive instructions I opted for high defensive line, closing down balanced (had it first at all over but that didn't work that well it seemed), committed tackling (give me those cards!), offside trap yes and no time wasting. Offside trap I'm not sure about, but my defenders seem okay with it, but rather slow for no offside trap. Not sure if that's the logic behind it but it looked okay.

Attacking instructions I changed a lot. I started with shooting on sight but, however fun to watch, the shots Othman fired we're, well, pathetic :). Look for overlap, not sure what it does, but it sounds to me like my WB is overlapping Othman on the left side, so that seems okay to tick. Rest is off as you can see.

Passing style, went for mixed, my first 11 seem okay with short and it looked nice on the pitch but the second string seems to do better with mixed. Passing focus, still doubting between both flanks or mixed, as well as GK distribution, short or mixed? Not sure.

Results were excellent despite it being my first go at tactic building. However, the match statistics were not that great. In the first few games my possession was too low for my liking, now it seems okay. Also, we seemed to do good against better teams, but struggling against worse teams. Not sure about how to improve that, maybe control or overload? Also, we don't create that much, but that could also be because my second choice players aren't good enough. We got throught the qualifying rounds of the Europa League so that was good for the total appearances of Boussaid, just lost a friendly against Leipzig, and league games against PSV and Zwolle.

September and October went great, only three draws, the one against Getafe I should have lost probably, also the win against Vitesse was a bit much since I only had two shots on goal. Also, great win against the amateurs of Excelsior M in the cup.. ahem. That left us at.. second in the league? What the hell happened with Ajax?

Feyenoord is going mental this year, and we faced them in December, got outplayed in the first half, made a nice attempt in the second half. The rest of the results we're great, as you can see. However, some of them aren't fair, for example the one I posted against VVV some way up. Probably will lose some more in the second half of the season, like I always do. Still struggling against the lesser teams of the division.

However, all this leaves us still at second place in the Eredivisie. Feyenoord just picked up their first loss but being realistic I expect to drop down around 5th or 6th. Just too much luck, that can't last is my experience. We also finished first in our Europa League group, which wasn't that great of a challenge to be fair.

Othman is doing quite well in his IF role on the left. Probably I could get a better score with a better player since he botches a lot of chances. Also funny to watch him take free kicks, probably one in five goes in  He is also improving a little bit, mostly since I got the training facilities upgraded (forgot to screenshot the message). Currently he has played 27 matches, 13 goals, 8 assists, 5 yellows and 1 red card. With an AvR of 7,74. Not too bad I think! Especially the cards are a nice touch  However, with a striker you could probably get a lot more points for the challenge.

Also, to round it up, general info from Utrecht and the (lack of) transfer history.

If you want to see some other stuff, just let me know! Currently I'm continueing with another save, but I will round this up over the course of the weekend or first half of next week I guess. Also, tips to improve my tactics are appreciated, or the logic behind some choices I shouldn't have made or should make.

Thanks for reading!

Edited April 3, 2020 by Dagion
Fixing links

[BatiGoal]

Keep going, mate, you'll be the first to top the leaderboard 🏆 

[Dagion]

Only way I will top a leaderboard 😜 thanks for the support!

[Dagion]

Alright, second half of the season is finished so here is the wrap-up!

First game after the winter break would be home to PSV Eindhoven, followed by three games in a row against Fortuna Sittard. I did some experiments with my tactic during those games, to increase the usage of Boussaid. Or I tried. Also I fiddled around with my defensive line, since my back line lacks pace, same reason I tried some mentality adjustments. 

It's a win. I think.

After our games against Fortuna (won all three, with mixed results statistic wise, no clue what my tactical changes were), Ajax was up. Ofcourse, some German team (forgot which one) came for my first choice LB after the window, unsettling him. Also I forgot to put Zoet back in goal after PSV. Combine that, and you get this.

Tactical mastermind at work. After this excellent display of my guys I expected the traditional slump after the winter window. They won their first game after this against Twente (we played at home) and away at N.E.C. for the Quarter final of the Dutch Cup. Crisis averted I would think.

Don't think, you dweeb! We drew the next three games, to win one in overtime and draw the next game again all over. Then we lose against AZ (in overtime). Well, all were fair draws, and the one against AZ we should have lost in regular time to be honest. We didn't create nearly as much as I'd like (some matches with 2 shots on goal) and managing the fitness of my players was quite difficult considering the quality gap between first string and second choice.

Luckily we won after that against Heracles before drawing again home to Lyon in the Second Knockout round of the Europa league. We went on a bit of a run, playing exactly the same as with the streak of draws (as in, creating almost nothing) but a bit more luck saw us picking up quite a few wins. Defensively speaking it is quite solid, giving little away. The return in Lyon we lucked out, strangely enough it says Guwara picked up a red card for Lyon but it should be Kondogbia? Boussaid was notching up quite some extra appearances this way. Also subbing him in towards the end when he wasn't fit but not sure if those count seeing he didn't get any ratings either in those games.

After our mini win streak our next opponent in the Europa League was Shakhtar. Our first game, surprise, we drew 2-2. But I didn't notice that much of the game since Boussaid had to come off injured in the 5th minute.. damn it!

Fingers crossed it wouldn't be a season ending injury or something like that..

Phew! Three weeks, could be a lot worse. He would be back for our last two games, one of which against Feyenoord, so that would be good. Only matches he would miss were against AZ (A), Shakthar (H) and Zwolle (H). 

After this scare we drew against AZ (should have lost really, 5 shots against 1 on target) before the revenge match against Shakthar.. We'll show them for injuring my beloved Boussaid!

Yes! Err.. before I could change anything they had a 0-2 lead. Never recovered after the first 15 minutes. Time for some more fiddling with tactics I guess.. Possession: good, Defense: good (usually), Attack: meh

Think I changed back to a more attacking mentality for the game against PEC Zwolle and it paid off. Possession wasn't that great, but we had 12 shots (6 on target) against 3 of theirs (0 on target). Naturally we won convincingly: 1-0. But, I subbed in Boussaid in the dying seconds so I was sure he knew how to tie his shoes again before the match against Feyenoord. 

Hahaha! You can't stop my tactics! Seriously, I don't know what happened. We played good, Boussaid was back and scored, but I don't think I changed that much since Shakthar. One match remaining against RKC Waalwijk and the season (thus challenge) would be over. To finish off our second half we ended with a 0-0 draw. But, the stats we're promising! They had 1 shot (0 on target), we had 8 (4 on target). So I think I finally got it right. Maybe.

Well, here is the rest of the fixture list.

To my surprise a message popped up. FC Utrecht win Eredivisie. FC Utrecht have won the Eredivisie title. What?! No way! With all my messing around with my tactics, focusing on Boussaid and his stats and the big lead Feyenoord had at the winter window I didn't notice how close it was in the end. Really not that important since the challenge is to get Boussaid's numbers as high as possible but what happened? I had to take a look at Feyenoord's fixtures.. They crashed. They crashed hard. 

They only got 7 wins, 6 draws and 4 losses after the break. Against 15-1-1 in the first half. My draw against RKC put us 1 point ahead. I have never been so surprised I think, because I really lost track of the positions in the division (I think I was in 2nd place until I played Feyenoord at home).

Look at those scoring numbers haha.. How in earth can you win the division with that?

Ah well, that is unexpectedly nice and surely I will never see a team lose it that hard but on to the really important stuff! Who cares about silverware? Numbers, figures, statistics! On to Othman! The hero of our story, and soon to be star player on a larger podium.

Why would they offer that kind of money? He performed good, but surely he isn't that great. 33 Million.. He didn't even win the Young player award, that went to Boadu. Who didn't play that many games and got a lower rating so I'm not sure what happened there.

What a farce. 22 games, 10 goals and 2 assists.

However, maybe they didn't want to give that award to Boussaid since.. justice!

And here he is, maybe a more intensive training approach could have gotten him more improved but he played quite a lot of games tried retraining to AMC to improve his shooting but that didn't work.

Then on to his accomplishments:

He played a total of 50 games! Luckily that injury only cost him 3 games (I think). Quite a solid display in the league, excellent in the cups however. Strangely enough he got the most match awards in the Europa League of all players, but he didn't even make the top 50 in average rating there.

20 goals is good, but someone with better shooting would have scored more I guess, 10 assists isn't that much either, but he was playing as an IF so it makes sense. And if you create only 2 shots it's hard to get an assist ofcourse  He didn't pick up any cards after the break sadly enough, the rest of the team picked up quite a number. In total he got 10 PoM's, which could have been more I think with better subbing. All in all, I'm happy for my first challenge! Quite funny to loose track of the standings since you're focused on letting your player perform. My total score would be 50 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 1 +7.7 = 93.7.. And I just noticed PoM's don't count looking back at the challenge rules. So all my subbing him when he had a high rating didn't matter anyways. Stupid. 

My expectation is you can do quite a bit better with a striker, or someone who is better suited as an IF. I see scores of other people on these boards with players that crush these numbers so I don't expect to be in the top 3 long. Especially since it's a short challenge to do in between saves so I do hope quite a few people attempt it. Thanks for reading! If i'm missing anything let me know @BatiGoal

 

And to finish off the needed screenshots of my transfer history and manager profile.

Woohoo, achieved Tolerated

Edited April 5, 2020 by Dagion
Fixing links

[BatiGoal]

That's a nice score in the end, especially with Utrecht. And winning the Eredivisie is the icing on the cake. Not that it matters for the challenge but it's still a good achievement in your first season. Congrats! Will add you to the leaderboard 👍 

[Kanegan]

That's a good score mate and winning the Eredivisie with Utrecht is just fantastic. 

[S4NCH0]

Great job here, and what a beast Boussaid turned to be. He seems like a bargain to me, you'd probably get him for 3M and as Arsenal has shown us, sell him for around 40M in a couple of seasons. It's an amazing gem you've found and a very fun and short challenge to say the least. 

[Dagion]

9 hours ago, Kanegan said:

That's a good score mate and winning the Eredivisie with Utrecht is just fantastic. 

Almost gave you a run for least scored to win the league haha.

12 minutes ago, S4NCH0 said:

Great job here, and what a beast Boussaid turned to be. He seems like a bargain to me, you'd probably get him for 3M and as Arsenal has shown us, sell him for around 40M in a couple of seasons. It's an amazing gem you've found and a very fun and short challenge to say the least. 

Still seems very overpriced to me, sadly I don't have the tactical knowledge to fine-tune my tactic. Not sure what exactly happens when adjusting instructions and I read somewhere that even shots doesn't mean that much. 

I'm already looking into some players for another go at this but I'm not sure how to get the most out of a striker to be fair. Trying out some stuff with a narrow 4-3-3 / 2-2-3-3 but that still has a long way to go. And maybe someone else takes the player I have in mind and we can start all over again.