Career Scratch Tries Frenchy Toons [Final]

[Scratch]

Update - Season 1

If you've read some of the posts above, you'll know we got off to a disastrous start but recovered to mid table by December. The disastrous start was my fault, a direct consequence of totally overhauling the squad with mostly younger players. I normally start saves in this manner, but:

• Normally not as extreme - in this case I only kept two players as the rest weren't French.

• Normally not in the EPL, where it is much tougher to player with a totally overhauled young squad than say Scotland, Greece or the US.

I didn't need to go all in on rebuilding in the first season, so perhaps I should have transitioned to 100% French more slowly. Anyway, it was done and I had to make the most of it.

Fortunately, what generally happens in these cases is that the team becomes much more competitive as the players start getting upgrades. It was no exception here and we finished the season much stronger than we started it.

The question though: Had we left it too late to qualify for Europe?

 

Transfers

I'll list the transfers here, though almost all of the business was done before the season started and is in the screenshot in a previous update above:

Spoiler

The main changes in January was that we sold or released a few more players we couldn't get rid of earlier, and we brought in Meslier. He had been my first choice GK to buy (I've used him before and he was pretty good), but he was on loan and couldn't be bought. As soon as he moved to Leeds (I think they bought the loan out), we pounced.

 

The Squad

Here's the squad at the end of the season:

Spoiler

All French in the senior team, all 25 or under, apart from Lejeune who was already at the club and Amavi who was 25 when he was signed. Lazaar the last non French hold out in the team. And I sort of forgot about Francillette in the Reserves.

 

Results

We were bundled out of the Carabao Cup by Peterborough in second round. 🙁 Like I said, we had a disastrous start.

We were much better by the time the FA Cup came around and we went all the way to the Final, where Liverpool beat us 2-0.

In the League, we spent most of the season outside the European places, but our late run got us to 7th with a couple of games to go and we held onto that (though a last day loss to Man Utd denied us 6th spot). However, we had only had 50 goals, which is incredibly low, especially for a goal based challenge.

Spoiler

All in all a good first season, and hopefully we're now positioned to do much better next year.

 

Injuries and Availability

Of our 4 main players:

• Gouiri had a 3 week injury

• Thuram had a month long injury

• Both Saint-Maximin and Diaby were injury free.

Spoiler

 

Development

The 4 main players now look like this:

 

Goals

At this point, I'm not sure if I'll continue on to do a 5 Season Hero challenge or not, so I'll just show the team goals for the Frenchy Toons one for now:

I guess I just manually add them up? That makes a total of 58 goals, all by French players. Thuram started the season stronger, but Gouri finished the season as number 1.

 

Assists

A total of 50 assists, all by French players. Diaby looking better than Saint-Maximin at this point. I swapped the corners to him in the second half of the season because Saint-Maximin wasn't getting enough converted (makes sense with his lower crossing).

 

Totals

Season	French Goals	French Assists	Total
01	58	50	108
Total	58	50	108

Compared to @Kanegan who got 170 in the first season, I'm off to a terrible start! Still, at this rate, I'll be second (out of two) on the leaderboard.

 

[AdamNufc]

3 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Update - Season 1

If you've read some of the posts above, you'll know we got off to a disastrous start but recovered to mid table by December. The disastrous start was my fault, a direct consequence of totally overhauling the squad with mostly younger players. I normally start saves in this manner, but:

• Normally not as extreme - in this case I only kept two players as the rest weren't French.

• Normally not in the EPL, where it is much tougher to player with a totally overhauled young squad than say Scotland, Greece or the US.

I didn't need to go all in on rebuilding in the first season, so perhaps I should have transitioned to 100% French more slowly. Anyway, it was done and I had to make the most of it.

Fortunately, what generally happens in these cases is that the team becomes much more competitive as the players start getting upgrades. It was no exception here and we finished the season much stronger than we started it.

The question though: Had we left it too late to qualify for Europe?

 

Transfers

I'll list the transfers here, though almost all of the business was done before the season started and is in the screenshot in a previous update above:

  Hide contents

The main changes in January was that we sold or released a few more players we couldn't get rid of earlier, and we brought in Meslier. He had been my first choice GK to buy (I've used him before and he was pretty good), but he was on loan and couldn't be bought. As soon as he moved to Leeds (I think they bought the loan out), we pounced.

 

The Squad

Here's the squad at the end of the season:

  Hide contents

All French in the senior team, all 25 or under, apart from Lejeune who was already at the club and Amavi who was 25 when he was signed. Lazaar the last non French hold out in the team. And I sort of forgot about Francillette in the Reserves.

 

Results

We were bundled out of the Carabao Cup by Peterborough in second round. 🙁 Like I said, we had a disastrous start.

We were much better by the time the FA Cup came around and we went all the way to the Final, where Liverpool beat us 2-0.

In the League, we spent most of the season outside the European places, but our late run got us to 7th with a couple of games to go and we held onto that (though a last day loss to Man Utd denied us 6th spot). However, we had only had 50 goals, which is incredibly low, especially for a goal based challenge.

  Hide contents

All in all a good first season, and hopefully we're now positioned to do much better next year.

 

Injuries and Availability

Of our 4 main players:

• Gouiri had a 3 week injury

• Thuram had a month long injury

• Both Saint-Maximin and Diaby were injury free.

  Hide contents

 

Development

The 4 main players now look like this:

 

Goals

At this point, I'm not sure if I'll continue on to do a 5 Season Hero challenge or not, so I'll just show the team goals for the Frenchy Toons one for now:

I guess I just manually add them up? That makes a total of 58 goals, all by French players. Thuram started the season stronger, but Gouri finished the season as number 1.

 

Assists

A total of 50 assists, all by French players. Diaby looking better than Saint-Maximin at this point. I swapped the corners to him in the second half of the season because Saint-Maximin wasn't getting enough converted (makes sense with his lower crossing).

 

Totals

Season	French Goals	French Assists	Total
01	58	50	108
Total	58	50	108

Compared to @Kanegan who got 170 in the first season, I'm off to a terrible start! Still, at this rate, I'll be second (out of two) on the leaderboard.

 

That is not a bad start mate! Unlucky in the final! I often find no matter what I do tactically my teams often don't score many but don't concede many either , well in big leagues that is 

Your on course to do well! And 7th after a disastrous start is a brilliant recovery 

[Scratch]

Just now, AdamNufc said:

That is not a bad start mate! Unlucky in the final! I often find no matter what I do tactically my teams often don't score many but don't concede many either , well in big leagues that is 

Your on course to do well! And 7th after a disastrous start is a brilliant recovery 

Yeah, my tactic is a little lower scoring than most, and needs a great team for the goals to flow. We didn't have that this season so we struggled for goals. I'm hoping to pick the pace up significantly this season, but with a third of the challenge gone, it's probably too little too late. 

If I was to do it over, I'd bring in French strikers and wingers to get most of the goals and assists and leave the rest this year and slowly build them up. I'd probably have to consider a different tactic too (great for a 1KC, but maybe not this). 

[AdamNufc]

1 minute ago, Scratch said:

Yeah, my tactic is a little lower scoring than most, and needs a great team for the goals to flow. We didn't have that this season so we struggled for goals. I'm hoping to pick the pace up significantly this season, but with a third of the challenge gone, it's probably too little too late. 

If I was to do it over, I'd bring in French strikers and wingers to get most of the goals and assists and leave the rest this year and slowly build them up. I'd probably have to consider a different tactic too (great for a 1KC, but maybe not this). 

The rebuild job was risky of course but maybe they've gelled well in the first season and they can dominate the next four so you never know it could work out in end for you ! 

 

[Kanegan]

I went for a crazy tactic which was the reason for the score but still a great start mate. 

[Ian]

Nice job in turning things around as it wasn’t looking good early on. Next year they could easily do much better after that experience.

Keep it up.

[Cockers2505]

Just caught up mate, not a bad start in Season 1 after the dreadful first few games, but then the turn around happened, and all ended well to a degree, I'm sure with a season behind them and more maturity, you will start to see the results improve each game, good luck buddy 

[Scratch]

@AdamNufc @Kanegan @Ian @Cockers2505 - thanks lads for your comments. Sorry I missed them, I'm just like a noob sometimes. 😵 I been commenting on other posts and missed the comments on mine until I came to post the next season...

[Scratch]

Update - Season 2

Season 1 was underwhelming, with only 58 goals and 50 assists, but we were building our squad to explode this season! We had a lot of younger players who've now improved and should be ready to take on the world this season.

Let's see if they lived up to that...

 

Transfers

There were very few transfers this season (in contrast to last season's total overhaul):

Spoiler

We sold the rest of our non-Frenchmen and bought two players (Mbeumo and Wissa) as cover for injuries. The other two coming in were both regens who might get game time in season 3 (at 16 years old they didn't play much this season).

 

The Squad

Here is the squad at the end of the season, showing we're entirely French now (except for greyed out players in the Reserves):

Spoiler

 

Results

Here are our results for this season:

Spoiler

• For the second season in a row, we were bundled out of the Carabao Cup early, this time in the third round, where Wolves beat us on penalties.

• We lost another penalty shootout in the FA Cup Quarter Final, this time to Tottenham.

• In the League we finished second behind Man City, with more goals this time (67), but still not as many as I'd like (though we scored more freely in Europe and the cups).

• In the Euro Cup we did really well, topping our group and ploughing through the knockout rounds until we met Chelsea in the Semi Final, who duly knocked us out.

A decent season, but we want to actually win something next year. We're not too far off it, because we were the better team each time we got knocked out - we just need to be able to score an extra goal here and there.

 

Injuries and Availability

Of our 4 main players, Diaby had a 3 week injury and Saint Maximin missed the start of the season with an injury (I forgot to screenshot it):

Spoiler

 

Development

The 4 main players now look like this:

 

Goals

A total of 125 goals, all by French players, which is a massive improvement on last season.

 

Assists

A total of 107 assists, all by French players, likewise a massive improvement.

 

Results

Season	French Goals	French Assists	Total
01	58	50	108
02	125	107	232
Total	183	157	340

After a terrible first season, it all clicked this season. Not unexpected, given that's always the pattern in my careers (a whole team of players levelling up a lot over two years), but welcome nonetheless.

 

[Kanegan]

Thats a tremendous second season @Scratch. You are going to smash my score to pieces in the next season. 

[AdamNufc]

Well done @Scratch I now know how you felt first season after a complete overhaul as at first it's very difficult to get a good run of results!

Great second season for you and hopefully get a trophy in your final season of the challenge 😀

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, Kanegan said:

Thats a tremendous second season @Scratch. You are going to smash my score to pieces in the next season. 

Thanks mate. We'll see. Might be like my Carroll / LA Galaxy career where we were second season wonders! 😄

Nah, this team will still improve, but most players have either maxed out or slowed right down so I'm not expecting much improvement next year. Normally in the 3rd season I'd buy better players, but the ones I need to improve the squad now are either out of the price range for this challenge or 16 year old regens that won't help in the season remaining... Still if I can match this season, I'll just pip you - but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out. 

[Scratch]

3 minutes ago, AdamNufc said:

Well done @Scratch I now know how you felt first season after a complete overhaul as at first it's very difficult to get a good run of results!

Great second season for you and hopefully get a trophy in your final season of the challenge 😀

Thanks mate, that's it exactly. I generally do a large overhaul in every career (this one was a bit more extreme admittedly) and I always buy youngsters who need some time to mature. One day I will do a save as a PSG or Barce or something and be able to buy the finished article, but normally those players are out of range for me and I need to bring through the future stars - which takes time.

And yeah, I'll try to get a trophy for the fans next season!

[Kanegan]

45 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Thanks mate. We'll see. Might be like my Carroll / LA Galaxy career where we were second season wonders! 😄

Nah, this team will still improve, but most players have either maxed out or slowed right down so I'm not expecting much improvement next year. Normally in the 3rd season I'd buy better players, but the ones I need to improve the squad now are either out of the price range for this challenge or 16 year old regens that won't help in the season remaining... Still if I can match this season, I'll just pip you - but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out. 

Also while I am at it, don't forget to check out and predict on my next career. 😀

[Ian]

Fabulous second season and the squad seems well set for a nice third season. 

[smoggy90]

Fantastic mate, just read your recovery in season 1 and thought that was impressive and then season 2 blew me away! Excellent work!

[Scratch]

3 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Also while I am at it, don't forget to check out and predict on my next career. 😀

Haha, yeah I saw that not long ago and it's open in the other tab! Will be interested to see who your hero is, so you can expect me there soon. 

[Scratch]

15 minutes ago, Ian said:

Fabulous second season and the squad seems well set for a nice third season. 

Thanks mate. Yeah I'm obviously expecting to at least match this season, although I'd normally be refreshing the squad with some regens or some top quality players, so I'm not sure whether they can push it much further.

[Scratch]

7 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

Fantastic mate, just read your recovery in season 1 and thought that was impressive and then season 2 blew me away! Excellent work!

Thanks mate. I knew we'd be better this season but was really happy how much we turned it around. That said, the more I think about it, the less happy I am. Although it was a big step forward, 125 goals in all competitions isn't that much. @BatiGoal would have that by February! So it was good, but only relatively speaking. 😄

[Scratch]

At least you can't deny we're making progress...

Season 1:

 

Season 2:

 

Season 3:

 

I wonder how far we'll get next season...

[AdamNufc]

3 hours ago, Scratch said:

At least you can't deny we're making progress...

Season 1:

 

Season 2:

 

Season 3:

 

I wonder how far we'll get next season...

Not good but considering the challenge is only for 3 series unless your going to continue there is no 4th season haha 

[Rob]

Wonderful second season. 

I will say this though: if you took charge of PSG I guarantee you will still buy players to develop. It’s the developer in you (I get it too). They’ll just be better (and younger) players.

[Scratch]

19 minutes ago, AdamNufc said:

Not good but considering the challenge is only for 3 series unless your going to continue there is no 4th season haha 

Haha, yeah, I am actually thinking about it... If Gouiri is on track to get 300 over 5 seasons, then I might go for the 5 Season Hero leaderboard with him. Might be touch and go though, really depends on this season.

[Scratch]

13 minutes ago, Rob said:

Wonderful second season. 

I will say this though: if you took charge of PSG I guarantee you will still buy players to develop. It’s the developer in you (I get it too). They’ll just be better (and younger) players.

Thanks mate. Yeah, I would keep buying the youngsters, you know me too well. 🙂

I think that's why so far none of my 5 Season Hero saves have lined up with @Foxy's Peak Years challenge. Even though a 24 year should be perfect for a 5SH career, so far I've opted for 22 and 23 year olds (who don't qualify for Peak Years), just because I know I'll have more fun as they have more development in them. Sooner or later I'll pick a 24yo and combine them.

[FuddledFox]

4 hours ago, Scratch said:

think that's why so far none of my 5 Season Hero saves have lined up with @Foxy's Peak Years challenge. Even though a 24 year should be perfect for a 5SH career, so far I've opted for 22 and 23 year olds (who don't qualify for Peak Years), just because I know I'll have more fun as they have more development in them. Sooner or later I'll pick a 24yo and combine them.

That’s why it’s good having the two different challenges as although they are similar yours does open up different age players and mine has a million leaderboards to aim for.

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, Foxy said:

That’s why it’s good having the two different challenges as although they are similar yours does open up different age players and mine has a million leaderboards to aim for.

LoL, that's the other reason I haven't tried yours yet - I get dizzy trying to work out what to try! 😄 Jokes only, thinking I will probably try it next. 

[Scratch]

Update - Season 3

Season 2 was much improved compared to season 1, but we still didn't win anything. The aim for season 3 is to finally deliver a trophy of some sort to the long suffering Newcastle fans. And of course get a bunch of goals and assists for the Frenchy Toons leaderboard.

 

Transfers

Only one transfer (a young regen coming in as cover):

Spoiler

There was no point to buying anyone else. No one available for under the £15.75M limit could improve the team. Even if they could, I can't sell any players (they are all French), so bringing in more players would just lead to unhappiness in the squad.

 

The Squad

Here is the squad at the end of the season, showing we're entirely French now (except for greyed out players in the Reserves):

Spoiler

That qualifies us for the 100 point bonus.

 

Results

Here are our results for this season:

Spoiler

• After getting knocked out of the Carabao Cup in the second round (season 1), then the third round (season 2), this year we went all the way to the fourth round. The bookies have stopped taking bets on which round we'll get knocked out next year.

• For the second season in a row we lost in the FA Cup Quarter Final, this time to Liverpool.

• We dominated the League, winning it by 12 points! A trophy at last!! 🏆

• But wait, there's more! We won the Champions League as well, beating Juve 2-1 in the final!! 🏆

Probably no coincidence that we went further in the later competitions, as we got better as time went on. The Carabao Cup was too early in the season for us. Liverpool were still leading the league (or very close second) in March when they knocked us out of the FA Cup. But we got stronger and no-one could touch us by the end of the season.

 

Injuries and Availability

Gouiri was out for a month at the start of the season, Diaby was out for a month at the end, and the other two lads got off scot free:

Spoiler

 

Development

The 4 main players now look like this:

Main thing of note was Gouiri getting a bump of 3+ Pace in a single update! I have seen that before, but it's really rare. Not complaining, though I would have preferred +3 Aerial to be honest.

 

Goals

A total of 127 goals, all by French players, which is two more than last season.

 

Assists

A total of 115 assists, all by French players, which is eight more than last season.

 

Results

Season	French Goals	French Assists	Total
01	58	50	108
02	125	107	232
03	127	115	242
French only bonus	NA	NA	100
Total	310	272	682

A great season from the team results perspective and another very good season for the challenge, which is now over.

 

Repercussions

The phone rang not long after the season had end. It was my old mate Lee Charnley:

What the heck are you playing at?

What do you mean?

All this... winning... We didn't want that!

What do you mean? That's the point of football.

I told you before, we're running a business not a football team. It just doesn't work if one of the employees becomes more popular than the owner. We could have kept Rafa if we wanted that.

So I wasn't supposed to win?

Of course not, I would have thought that was clear. Anyway, you've put us in a very difficult situation now. Well actually not that difficult, you're fired!!

Wait, fired? I just won the Champions League!

Don't remind me. It's caused no end of troubles. Anyway, no time to talk. I have to go text all the players that they are being sold. Mike wants to go Egyptian now. By the way, don't try to use the bus card, it's been cancelled.

Time for a change of scenery I guess. Thanks for following!

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Scratch

[AdamNufc]

@Scratch Well Done mate and fantastic score 

A lot better than my attempt 😂

Champions League is a nice addition to the trophy cabinet 

 

[Scratch]

3 minutes ago, AdamNufc said:

@Scratch Well Done mate and fantastic score 

A lot better than my attempt 😂

Champions League is a nice addition to the trophy cabinet 

 

Thanks mate. It ended up with the same result (sacked!). 😄

Yeah, was pretty happy with the end result. Was a very interesting challenge, although French only felt a bit restrictive by the end. I was going to clear out half the squad and keep going to try to get Gouiri to 300 in 5 seasons (he had 149 in 3 seasons), but I've had my head turned by another challenge.

[Kanegan]

Told you that you will beat my score. Well done mate. The CL triumph was great, i never managed it in my attempt.