Career Ian - The Fabled Number 10 Shirt Challenge (Completed)

[Ian]

The Fabled Number 10 Shirt Challenge

This was the very first challenge I ever completed on last year's game and here I am to do it all over again. When FMM 20 came out and I saw that Juventus were called Zebre I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed as this was always a challenge I planned on doing and that name change kind of put me off. Anyway, I’ve got a nice system that I think will work really well for this so I’m just going to put the name change to one side and go for it.

 

Here is the challenge created by @danovic78

 

If you read the challenge you’ll quickly get the gist of what we need to do but basically we are going for goals and assists from a variety of players of different nationalities for a season each. We can’t use any strikers and that’s it so not too daunting at all.

 

Team: Juventus (Zebre)

 

 

Season 1: Jeff Hendrick (Ireland)

You can see I’ve gone boring and used the same player that practically everyone uses for this including myself on my previous attempt but I had no plans to try anyone else as if the truth be told I don’t really like any of the other options and this way I can sort of compare my return to my previous attempt. Fear not though I promise all of the future players will differ from the ones I used last time out.

 

I’ll be back later so we can see how Jeff got on but here’s a little preview and you can see he was a success as he helped fire us to Italian Cup glory.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Ian

[smoggy90]

Great challenge mate and good luck!

[broodje kip]

😮 What’s going to happen to your DT? Good Luck anyway 

[Rob]

Three careers on the go @Ian! Good luck chap.

[FuddledFox]

I imagine there isn’t very many other options for the first season so no need to apologise for going with the best one. I’m sure you will have some interesting names for us soon.

Easy way round the Zebre issue matey.

 

[Ian]

9 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great challenge mate and good luck!

Thank you Smoggy.

9 hours ago, broodje kip said:

😮 What’s going to happen to your DT? Good Luck anyway 

Thank you Lord Danish, don’t you worry about my DT, I haven’t given up on that yet.

7 hours ago, Rob said:

Three careers on the go @Ian! Good luck chap.

Thank you Rob, some of my other transfers won’t surprise you haha.

6 hours ago, Foxy said:

I imagine there isn’t very many other options for the first season so no need to apologise for going with the best one. I’m sure you will have some interesting names for us soon.

Easy way round the Zebre issue matey.

 

Thank you Foxy, I just can’t quite get away with any of the other Irish options and do like Hendrick as a nice all round player. I should’ve got the naming fix for this really but unfortunately I forgot.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Ian

[gunnersaur]

Good luck man ... Not a bother to you 

[Titjes]

Good luck mate 😉

[Ian]

13 hours ago, gunnersaur said:

Good luck man ... Not a bother to you 

 

9 hours ago, Titjes said:

Good luck mate 😉

Thank you both, season 1 will be posted shortly and it’s safe to say I’m very happy with it.

[Ian]

Season 1

So you all know I went with the obvious choice of Jeff Hendrick as my Irish fabled number 10 so now we’ll see how he and the team performed.

 

Transfers

Unfortunately I’ve gone boring here too as some of these signings won’t be at all surprising to anyone who has viewed most of my recent stuff. Alassane Pléa is the only incoming player I haven’t previously used although I haven’t used Belotti on this year's game I don’t think so it’ll be nice to see how he performs. I’m going with two DLF’s up top with my number 10 at AM as a Treq so I wanted strikers with good teamwork and those two strikers fitted the bill.

 

Team Results

We had a great opening season going unbeaten in the league and winning all cups we competed in. I really like Italy for goals and I always seem to do well in that regard here and I’m really happy with the 124 we scored in the league this year. As previewed earlier Jeff scored a fine hat trick to help us beat Inter to the Italian Cup and the Super Cup was really one sided even though the 2-1 scoreline mightn’t suggest that. The Champions League was comfortable until the final which was a very tight affair with us just about coming out on top over Real.

Spoiler

 

Jeff Hendrick

Jeff had a terrific season with these games below being the most notable.

Spoiler

 

He ended up with 46 goals and 39 assists in 54 games so very happy with that. He only suffered one minor injury all season so couldn’t have gone much better on that front and he actually improved a fair bit in attributes during the season with his movement in particular shooting up.

Spoiler

 

Player Stats

You can see such a lot went through Jeff and it’s safe to say he was the star of the team and did a fine job as our first fabled number 10 setting a great benchmark for the forthcoming players.

 

Manager

Spoiler

 

Score

Season 1 - Ireland: Jeff Hendrick: 46 goals and 39 assists = 85

Grand Total: 85

 

Now we continue on to season two where we need a French number 10 and I’ll reveal who I’ve chosen shortly.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Ian

[broodje kip]

Massive score Ian. Zaniolo deal looks like a steal

[Rob]

Great start, but I SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE THE TRANSFER SCREENSHOTS!  You’ve left poor Scott locked in your cupboard for this one!

[Titjes]

Fantastic start mate, kiu 😲😁

[Ian]

3 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Massive score Ian. Zaniolo deal looks like a steal

Thank you Lord, yes a part exchange for Higuain I believe. I’ve found Zaniolo a bit hit or miss this year as sometimes he just doesn’t seem to develop so good. Hopefully he will here.

3 hours ago, Rob said:

Great start, but I SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE THE TRANSFER SCREENSHOTS!  You’ve left poor Scott locked in your cupboard for this one!

Thank you Rob, haha, yes I seem to have abandoned Scott recently, we can just pretend he’s self isolating.

3 hours ago, Titjes said:

Fantastic start mate, kiu 😲😁

Thanks Titjes, yes I’m happy with it, I did mention earlier that I thought I had a good system for this and it’s looking like that is the case. Hopefully the others can perform similar to this.

[smoggy90]

Awesome start that is mate!

[broodje kip]

4 hours ago, Ian said:

Zaniolo a bit hit or miss this year as sometimes he just doesn’t seem to develop so good. Hopefully he will here.

 

This is interesting. I didn’t really follow Serie A so I couldn’t really say how good he’s in real life and I didn’t actually try to play much big clubs to even buy him so I couldn’t say how’s his development.

Is there even any chance he flops since I saw his attributes are very good for a young age perhaps he’s too good for the age?

Also if anyone that watch Serie A can you tell me how great Zaniolo is? I did saw some matches and he seems to play quite good.

[Ian]

On 09/06/2020 at 20:00, smoggy90 said:

Awesome start that is mate!

Thank you Smoggy, he did very well.

On 09/06/2020 at 23:44, broodje kip said:

 

This is interesting. I didn’t really follow Serie A so I couldn’t really say how good he’s in real life and I didn’t actually try to play much big clubs to even buy him so I couldn’t say how’s his development.

Is there even any chance he flops since I saw his attributes are very good for a young age perhaps he’s too good for the age?

Also if anyone that watch Serie A can you tell me how great Zaniolo is? I did saw some matches and he seems to play quite good.

I don’t know a great about how he’s getting on in real life but on the game I’ve found him strange this year as he often doesn’t develop how you’d expect. I had him on my Augusta save and when he got to his mid twenties a few attributes started dropping and he never got to the heights you’d expect yet on other saves he has developed very nicely.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Ian

[Ian]

Season 2 - Player Choice

After our nice opening season with Jeff performing very well as our Irish No.10 we need to get rid of him and bring in a French replacement. The replacement is supposed to mimic Michel Platini so it’s safe to say he’s got a tough job on his hands.

There were a good few decent options available so the decision wasn’t easy but in the end I decided to bring in 28 year old Florent Mollet from Montpellier.

 

Florent Mollet (France)

He’s a nice enough looking player that I hadn’t heard of and that is probably what swayed me in the end out of intrigue. Also, the £18.75 we spent on him was very reasonable and it gave us more money to spend elsewhere on the squad. Looking at his history it seems he’s had a steady career in France and now he’s got his chance at the big time as the next No.10 at Juventus.

 

I’ll be back later to show you how he and the team got on but things didn’t start so great as our new No.10* suffered an early season injury.

* I actually forgot to give him the No.10 shirt.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Ian

[broodje kip]

😮 that’s an exciting choice of player considering the quality of French players

[gunnersaur]

Interesting choice good luck 

[Kun Aguero]

Not the usual choice of player, good luck!

[shosky]

Mollet what? But with his technique and teamwork attributes, I believe he should do well. Not forgetting your system too

[Rob]

Crossing (for corners and some free kicks) 15, passing 14, technique 15... looks good. But creativity of 12, hmmm. An interesting choice of player there Ian.

[Ian]

4 hours ago, broodje kip said:

😮 that’s an exciting choice of player considering the quality of French players

Thank you Lord Danish, there are some truly great French options but with them costing a lot more I decided to go with a medium priced option to save a bit of money for the squad.

3 hours ago, gunnersaur said:

Interesting choice good luck 

Thank you Gunnersaur, yes I quite like the look of him and the cost was fairly reasonable which was nice as it gives us more more for the squad.

3 hours ago, Kun Aguero said:

Not the usual choice of player, good luck!

Thanks Kun, I wasn’t sure who to go with as there were quite a few options in France but he caught my eye the most. I really like searching through the French leagues for players as there seems to be loads of decent fairly cheap players.

1 hour ago, shosky said:

Mollet what? But with his technique and teamwork attributes, I believe he should do well. Not forgetting your system too

Thanks Shosky, Yes I noticed the technique and teamwork and I’m hoping he’ll do a decent job for us.

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Crossing (for corners and some free kicks) 15, passing 14, technique 15... looks good. But creativity of 12, hmmm. An interesting choice of player there Ian.

Thank you Rob, some really nice attributes and if that creativity was just a touch higher I’d be thrilled but can’t have everything I guess. In scouting him I actually think I may have also found my French option for season 6 so all is good.

[FuddledFox]

Looks a decent player Ian but not someone I know of so I can’t wait to see how he does. 🤞that injury isn’t an omen on the season ahead.

[smoggy90]

Interesting player Ian, look forward to seeing how he does and hopefully that is the only injury he suffers. 

[Kanegan]

never heard of him before so good luck.

[Ian]

20 hours ago, Foxy said:

Looks a decent player Ian but not someone I know of so I can’t wait to see how he does. 🤞that injury isn’t an omen on the season ahead.

Thank you Foxy, I’ve noticed there seems to be fair few decent players in France that aren't valued too highly and I quite like just looking through them all. Some brilliant options there even cheaper than Mollet and probably great for Championship sides.

8 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Interesting player Ian, look forward to seeing how he does and hopefully that is the only injury he suffers. 

Thank you Smoggy, yeah he caught my eye when I saw him and felt I needed to go with him. There’s a younger player that I fancy for the next French option on season 6 so hopefully he’ll have developed well and be available when that time comes

7 hours ago, Kanegan said:

never heard of him before so good luck.

Thank you Kane

I’ll be back later on this evening where we’ll find out how he got on.

[Ian]

Season 2 - Florent Mollet (France)

Florent Mollet was my choice as our replacement for the truly great player Michel Platini so big boots to fill, let’s see how things went.

 

Transfers

I mentioned previously that I didn’t want to blow my whole budget on my No.10 because I felt the squad needed improving and with me needing a top quality squad to get my system to work I’ve got to watch what I’m doing as it’d be easy to end up weak in certain areas. I’d brought Ajer in last season as a young centre back to develop but he ended up not playing much and subsequently had a tantrum so I made my decision that he was going. Dias was my preferred option so I went in for him looking to swap him for Ajer but unfortunately I had to spend a lot more than I’d have liked but went for it nonetheless. With next to no funds left I still felt we lacked cover in certain areas so I loaned in young striker Luis Suárez from Watford and young keeper Iñaki Peńa from Barcelona who I’m familiar with from my current double trouble career and he should be decent enough as a backup option.

Spoiler

 

Team Results

We had another very successful season where all we missed out on trophy wise was the Super Cup where Inter Milan did us in extra time, it was one of those games where our boys left their shooting boots at home and we paid the price. We won the first Club World Championship before new year* and are still in the post season one where we’ll be meeting Liverpool in the semi final as soon as we move over to the new season.

* I forgot to take the screenshot.

Spoiler

 

Florent Mollet

We know he had that early season injury which makes you wonder whether that would become a recurring thing but he came back ok, was doing just fine and had a nice moment in the semi final of the Club World Championship where he scored four and assisted two in a very one side match against Wydad Casablanca.

 

He was very consistent from then on in regularly creating and scoring goals and he knocked in a nice hat trick against Milan towards the end of the season.

 

In the last match before the season cut off point he contributed a goal and an assist against SPO which is fine and you’d normally be happy enough with that but when you win 10-0 there’s a slight disappointment there that he maybe could’ve filled his boots.

 

All in all he did well and scored 55 goals and assisted another 28 so 83 in total which we’re very happy with. He couldn’t quite beat Jeff and even if he had have done it’d have had to have been by a good few before we could consider him actually doing better as Jeff didn’t have all of those CWC games against weak opposition. Still a great return though and I was surprised he scored so many as with his good crossing I thought he might have got more assists from set pieces and less goals so just goes to show what I know.

 

Manager

 

Score

 

Season 1 - Ireland: Jeff Hendrick: 46 goals and 39 assists = 85

Season 2 - France: Florent Mollet: 55 goals and 28 assists = 83

Grand Total: 168

 

So we now head back home as we’ve got two consecutive seasons with Italian No.10’s and I’ll be back later to reveal my choice for next season.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Ian

[shosky]

A wonderful return from an unheralded player. But for that early season injury, he would have beaten Hendrick. Great job Ian