Career Ian attempts the Neymar and Mbappe Challenge

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to my attempt at The Neymar and Mbappé Inside Forward Challenge created @Rob.

The challenge is a simple one as we just need to try and get as many goals and assists from both Neymar and Mbappé as we can in one season playing as PSG and try to win as many league points and as high a goal difference as possible. The only rule is that both players must play in their natural inside forward position on their preferred side so that’s left for Neymar and right for Mbappé

Here are the two players at the beginning of the season, they both have faces which is always nice for these type of challenges. They are both very good as you can see with only their stamina being a slight concern and of course Mbappé is still young but luckily he’s one of the best youngsters on the game can’t complain really.

 

Right, let’s make a start.

 

Transfers

Half of the battle when it comes to managing PSG is getting the squad ready, well it is for me anyway as I don’t like the original squad at all so nearly everyone would be leaving. I’d even put the challenge off a few times due to the required wheeling and dealing but eventually I got my act together and made a start.

You can see we did a lot of business and most of the names probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you as they are mostly superstar players that we brought in. Varane, McKenna and Fabinho were brought in to play at centre back and I decided to keep Kimpembe to make up our four there. Fabinho I’ve used at centre back a few times and he always seems to do a great job and of course McKenna was always going to be invited along on this Paris trip. Gündogan, Tolisso, Wijnaldum, Brozovic, Zielinski, Can and Sánchez were brought in as our central midfielders and most won’t need any introduction. Can can play centre back too which swayed me towards him and Sánchez is an older player at 34 who always comes up in my searches with a fine set of attributes, he’ll probably decline quickly and more than likely not feature much but he’s only there for cover. Williams and Bellarabi will be my right wingers and Alex Sandro will be my number one left winger with Di Maria my number two. Just the forward positions to sort out now and Willian, Bernardeschi, Vitolo and Christie were the chosen players for those roles and all can play in all of the positions plus Williams and some of the other wingers can too so plenty of options.

Spoiler

 

Tactic

I had all sorts of ideas for how to approach this and in the end decided I’d have a foray into strikerless which I’ve never really tried as far as goalscoring goes. I did go strikerless with Liverpool for the Augusta challenge where we needed to concede as little goals as possible and my system worked very well in that regard but I remember we hardly scored any goals so a different approach needed here. The Trequarista could well steal the show so a bit of a risk but my hope was that we’d score a hefty amount of goals, keep a somewhat reasonable defence and with any luck the two main men would be heavily involved in the majority of the goals.

 

I’ve wrote a little more than I expected to here so I’ll stop now and bring you the full season update later where we’ll see how the two superstars got on.

 

Thanks for reading.

[AdamNufc]

20 minutes ago, Ian said:

Hello and welcome to my attempt at The Neymar and Mbappé Inside Forward Challenge created @Rob.

The challenge is a simple one as we just need to try and get as many goals and assists from both Neymar and Mbappé as we can in one season playing as PSG and try to win as many league points and as high a goal difference as possible. The only rule is that both players must play in their natural inside forward position on their preferred side so that’s left for Neymar and right for Mbappé

Here are the two players at the beginning of the season, they both have faces which is always nice for these type of challenges. They are both very good as you can see with only their stamina being a slight concern and of course Mbappé is still young but luckily he’s one of the best youngsters on the game can’t complain really.

 

Right, let’s make a start.

 

Transfers

Half of the battle when it comes to managing PSG is getting the squad ready, well it is for me anyway as I don’t like the original squad at all so nearly everyone would be leaving. I’d even put the challenge off a few times due to the required wheeling and dealing but eventually I got my act together and made a start.

You can see we did a lot of business and most of the names probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you as they are mostly superstar players that we brought in. Varane, McKenna and Fabinho were brought in to play at centre back and I decided to keep Kimpembe to make up our four there. Fabinho I’ve used at centre back a few times and he always seems to do a great job and of course McKenna was always going to be invited along on this Paris trip. Gündogan, Tolisso, Wijnaldum, Brozovic, Zielinski, Can and Sánchez were brought in as our central midfielders and most won’t need any introduction. Can can play centre back too which swayed me towards him and Sánchez is an older player at 34 who always comes up in my searches with a fine set of attributes, he’ll probably decline quickly and more than likely not feature much but he’s only there for cover. Williams and Bellarabi will be my right wingers and Alex Sandro will be my number one left winger with Di Maria my number two. Just the forward positions to sort out now and Willian, Bernardeschi, Vitolo and Christie were the chosen players for those roles and all can play in all of the positions plus Williams and some of the other wingers can too so plenty of options.

  Hide contents

 

Tactic

I had all sorts of ideas for how to approach this and in the end decided I’d have a foray into strikerless which I’ve never really tried as far as goalscoring goes. I did go strikerless with Liverpool for the Augusta challenge where we needed to concede as little goals as possible and my system worked very well in that regard but I remember we hardly scored any goals so a different approach needed here. The Trequarista could well steal the show so a bit of a risk but my hope was that we’d score a hefty amount of goals, keep a somewhat reasonable defence and with any luck the two main men would be heavily involved in the majority of the goals.

 

I’ve wrote a little more than I expected to here so I’ll stop now and bring you the full season update later where we’ll see how the two superstars got on.

 

Thanks for reading.

This is where the score I set on the leaderboard gets best again haha! Can is a good signing he plays decent on the game , Fabinho is one of the most versatile on the game so that's also a quality bit of business alongside Wijnaldum

Surprised you sold Gueye tho he was solid for me when I attempted the challenge , looks a solid tactic , only thing I found with the challenge is fitness was a right nightmare with the pair having low stamina and the IF role being a very demanding one 

Good Luck @Ian

[Rob]

Good luck Ian! 

[Ian]

1 hour ago, AdamNufc said:

This is where the score I set on the leaderboard gets best again haha! Can is a good signing he plays decent on the game , Fabinho is one of the most versatile on the game so that's also a quality bit of business alongside Wijnaldum

Surprised you sold Gueye tho he was solid for me when I attempted the challenge , looks a solid tactic , only thing I found with the challenge is fitness was a right nightmare with the pair having low stamina and the IF role being a very demanding one 

Good Luck @Ian

Thank you Adam, I’ve used Can at Juve a few times and he’s a steady player. He can play at centre back too which was in my thoughts as with only having two I like them to be able to play a bit so he’ll be good cover there. I really like Wijnaldum on the game as he always seems to do well and doesn’t cost loads well for PSG standards anyway haha. Fabinho is good and I’ve gotten used to using him at centre back so I should probably try him back in midfield again in the future I think.

I should’ve maybe tried Gueye and a few of their current players as it’d be more interesting as I’ve gone the boring way with a load of players I’ve tried and tested.

Fitness is a concern as both don’t quite have the stamina I’d like and I’ll have to sub them off around 65-75 minutes nearly every game I expect to try and keep them as fresh as possible.

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Good luck Ian! 

Thank you Rob, you won’t have to wait too long as I should be back later on today with the next update. I was planning on doing the whole lot at once but it was getting a little long so I decided to split it into two.

[Ian]

Season Update

We hit the ground running in winning the first competitive game of the season which also meant we picked up out first piece of silverware. Mbappe scored a goal and Neymar managed two assists in a 3-0 victiry over Rennes.

 

The two picked away steadily during the first half of the season but there weren’t any massive hauls with this 4-0 win over Nantes being the highlight.

 

Things were going well at the halfway stage as we were still unbeaten in all competitions with just one league draw and a decent looking goal difference.

 

Disaster in January as we were dumped out of the league cup via a dreaded penalty shootout so no clean sweep this year.

 

Just when it looked like we might go all season without suffering any injuries to our duo Neymar picked up a knock whilst away on international duty at the end of March.

 

Mbappe’s season would come to an early end towards the end of April as he suffered a calf strain that would keep him out for a month.

 

The French cup was won in good style.

 

We also added the Champions League to our haul as we beat Atletico Madrid 5-1 which was probably a touch harsh on them going by the stats.

 

It probably won’t come as any real surprise to you all that we won the league but we did so in good fashion with 110 points and a goal difference of 104 which we can only be happy with.

 

Fixtures

Spoiler

 

Manager

Spoiler

 

Players

Neymar managed 29 goals and 37 assists to give him a total of 66 in 54 games so not quite as many goals as I’d hoped for but a decent chuck of assists largely helped by his quality from dead ball situations. Mbappé managed a few more goals as he hit 35 and also supplied 21 to give him a total of 56 in 51 games so a total of 122 points from the players which I’m happy enough with as a first attempt with a somewhat new system.

Spoiler

 

Score

Neymar: 29 goals and 37 assists = 66

Mbappé: 35 goals and 21 assists = 56

League Points: 110

Goal Difference: 104

Total: 336 points

 

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier I’m happy enough as it was a new system which hasn’t been fully tested and it went well. I had hoped for more points from the players so that’s something I’d look to improve on but it’ll be tough to improve on the league points and goal difference. All in all it was a very enjoyable challenge.

 

If you could please add my score to the leaderboard @Rob I’d be grateful.

 

Thanks for reading. 

[Rob]

Wonderful score Ian. I will add you now.

[Woody]

Wowzers!! 😀

[AdamNufc]

That's my score blown right out of the water , cracking score from you that Ian 😀

[FuddledFox]

Those injuries were a real bummer but that is still a great score.

[Kanegan]

Massive score there. 

[smoggy90]

Great score mate!

[Ian]

14 hours ago, Rob said:

Wonderful score Ian. I will add you now.

Thank you Rob, nice challenge especially as I haven’t been so keen on the inside forward role recently so nice to be forced into giving it a try.

14 hours ago, Woody said:

Wowzers!! 😀

Thanks Woody

14 hours ago, AdamNufc said:

That's my score blown right out of the water , cracking score from you that Ian 😀

Thank you Adam but apologies also.

12 hours ago, Foxy said:

Those injuries were a real bummer but that is still a great score.

Thanks Foxy, yeah just when I thought we’d go the whole season unscathed we suffer the injuries. I think Neymar’s one might’ve been a good one as in the second half of the season he was often tired and I was probably overplaying him so the forced rest may have helped him. Mbappe was annoying though as he missed the run in.

8 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Massive score there. 

Thank you Kane

26 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

Great score mate!

Thanks Smoggy

[JamesVilla]

Well done Ian. Love quick, easy challenges like this so might try and get back into FMM with this one. 

[Scratch]

Good stuff Ian. I've never really played with top players like that, making me tempted to try it sometime... 😄

[Ian]

On 20/07/2020 at 10:41, Jsavfc said:

Well done Ian. Love quick, easy challenges like this so might try and get back into FMM with this one. 

Thank JS, yes it’s a nice challenge without many rules or restrictions. Only thing is the massive squad rebuild at the beginning but once that’s done you can just blast through it.

7 hours ago, Scratch said:

Good stuff Ian. I've never really played with top players like that, making me tempted to try it sometime... 😄

Thank you Scratch, you should give it a go as it’ll be something different.