Career The English Killer: Ernesto's error (and mine)

[Dagion]

Alright, looks like I fancy doing short challenges after some long saves, and the English Killer challenge looks quite nice: only two seasons long and in the Greek league. Never played there, know some teams but most of it is unknown, most of the times I like managing in the lesser leagues so this must be fun!

Task at hand in short: take charge of Olympiakos and find an English striker for less than £3.0m and make as much goals as possible. Total points are his goals (all but friendlies) and league points and goal difference.

Hint of the player I used for this (already at the end of season 1). First large update probably tomorrow!

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by Dagion

[BatiGoal]

This fun lil challenge is getting the love it deserves as of late. 

Goodluck! 

[Kanegan]

2 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

This fun lil challenge is getting the love it deserves as of late. 

Goodluck! 

Kudos to the Challenge Cracker, yours truly for showing the way. 🤣

 

Good luck with this @Dagion

[Dagion]

Well, this is going to be rather short lived. Accidentally saved over it trying another challenge in between. Damn it #1! Will be a half challenge then.. guess it is my error, not Ernesto's. And thanks for the good luck wishes @BatiGoal and @Kanegan. It is in fact a really nice challenge, not too long and really fun because it's in the Greek league which isn't too bad but not that great either.

For who got the references, my player of choice is THE English killer: Matt Derbyshire! Still going strong at AC Omonoia apparently. He got sent away at Olympiakos by Ernesto Valverde, but I brought him back to relive the glory days!

The one and only English Killer:

We got him as part of a player exchange, player in question was worth maybe £1,5m maybe more but surely less than £3,0m. Not that it matters. He looks pretty decent, especially for Greek standards. You would think his free kicks would be okay, but he has a special trait which says something like inaccurate at long distances. Took me half a season of seeing Matt banging balls against defender's heads in the opponents' wall to finally make me realise he sucked at free-kicks. Not that I selected anyone else after half a season, but it explained it at least. Don't think he made one either. There was quite a bit of wheelin' and dealin' since Olympiakos only has roughly 1 million (in Euros) to spend, and are quite heavily overspending with the wages at minus 33k. March update is only 23k for anyone interested.

Transfers in:

Spoiler

 

Maybe not that visible; Brian Brobbey from Ajax as backup for good ole Matt, and at the bottom on loan Fati from Barca. Didn't spend much but signed some nice freebies (some are more nostalgic like Dani Koks who isn't really up to par for the Greek Super league but Abate, Milosevic surely are and Velthuizen maybe if he wasn't such a dick. Damen and Baars developed nicely and I could see them getting minutes in season 2. Well now we can't see but you know what I mean.

 

Transfers out:

Spoiler

 

Made a nice profit for myself with which I mostly increased the wage budget and was planning to scout some talent for the second season. Also got two upgrades on the facilities I think which surprised me because they we're already quite good.

 

The season went excellent, didn't screenshot the fixture list before overwriting so you'll just have to believe me if I say PSV booted us instantly from the CL qualifiers after which we entered the Europa league. Much more our level I guess, because we reached the semi-finals. And Matt got some praise on the way to the winter break.

In the semi-finals Real Madrid (yes..) was just a little bit too strong for us, the other semi was between BMG and City so it seemed Real and City had a bit of a whoopsie in the CL. Beat our group leaders Arsenal on the way to the semi's though. 

 

Spoiler

Always nice.

The league is a bit weird in that the top 6 teams after 26 matches play each other another two times to make it a total of 36 games. Quite tiring for the players the end of the season. AEK booted us out of the cup after Velthuizen thought he was Neuer in the 95th minute after which I released him on a free. Bastard. League went superb however, first 26 games only drew three games and won the rest. The remainder is a bit more difficult since you only play the top 6 teams but we managed to sneak in some wins to end the season undefeated!

Regular table:

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Champions group:

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Really fun managing in Greece, maybe I'll try this one again after finishing the other challenges I'm doing at the moment (will write them up also I guess, maybe a little bit shorter..)

Great stats in the end, managing a GD of 65 and 100 league points would have put us in a nice position for the second season. Not that I had any hopes because Matt was already getting old. No injuries however, also mentioned in his coach report I think..

Still had it though for the first season, clenching the topscorer title at the age of 34.

 

Spoiler

 

In total, he managed to amass a whopping 62 games in which he scored 34 times and managed 13 assists. Probably free kicks he botched but who cares?

That would have given us 100 (league points) + 65 (goal difference) + 34 (goals from Matt) = 199 points (damn it #2).

Would have loved to see the original killer on the board.. maybe @danovic78 can make me a DNF  

Player history:

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Manager profile:

 

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