Career Ian attempts The Kevin De Bruyne Challenge

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to my attempt at The Kevin De Bruyne Challenge created by @Rob which can be found here. Basically we need to take control of Manchester City and get Kevin to score and assist as many league goals as possible.

Before I start my attempt I must confess that I failed to read the challenge correctly and took it as goals and assists in all competitions which is pretty unforgivable really as it’s clearly stated numerous times as being league only. In my defence I was pretty busy yesterday when I saw the challenge and ended up just cracking on with it last night. So a bit of a disaster from myself and I’ve had a poor week on here in truth but there’s nothing to stop me posting my attempt so that’s what I’m going to do.

Here he is at the start and he’s a truly fine player and he loved the mighty reds as a boy so I’m happy to be managing him, just a shame it’s not for the mighty reds though as I can’t quite get away with Man City.

 

I signed a good few players and plenty you’ve seen me buy before including a few Liverpool players.

 

We had our squad set up and set upon the season to try and make Kevin shine. He was doing well, scoring and assisting regularly with this being a nice game for him early on in the season against Bournemouth.

 

He suffered a month long injury during the first half of the season which I forgot to screenshot then came back and was doing fine until he picked up another month long injury during the international break at the beginning of April.

 

I stopped there and these are the fixtures we’ve played and and you can see we lost out to Liverpool in the Community Shield and Spurs in the League Cup final. I’d love to tell you I just played weakened sides to focus on the league games as you’d expect given the challenge but I can’t as we did try.

Spoiler

 

We’re still in all of the other competitions and should win the league but with Kevin being out the next month it’s not looking like we’ll add too many more goals and assists to his tally.

 

I’ll play the remaining games tonight and see what his final total will be but here’s how he’s done so far.

 

Thank you all for reading and I’ll be back with the final update probably tomorrow. The thing is I’ve made my mistake so I could end up having another go just focusing on the league goals and assists but on the other hand I could carry this on for the peak years challenge if I fancy it. Only thing that’s putting me off is the fact I bought a lot of older players with it being just one season but we are Man City so funds shouldn’t be a problem to help me reshape the squad. I’ll see but for now I’ll focus on finishing this season.

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Ian

[AdamNufc]

Knew you'd be straight on this challenge @Ian haha! 

Alright first attempt which will be boosted if Bruyne gets back to fitness for a couple games 

I'm sure you will smash whatever this attempts score is whenever you try it next 

[smoggy90]

Monster total In the making here mate, well done!

[Rob]

Brilliant. 

[Ian]

5 hours ago, AdamNufc said:

Knew you'd be straight on this challenge @Ian haha! 

Alright first attempt which will be boosted if Bruyne gets back to fitness for a couple games 

I'm sure you will smash whatever this attempts score is whenever you try it next 

Thank you Adam, he’s a very fine player indeed but just a shame that I think he could be a touch injury prone.

As you say hopefully we’ll get the last two league games here and he can maybe add some more to his tally.

1 hour ago, smoggy90 said:

Monster total In the making here mate, well done!

Thank you Smoggy, it’s a very similar system to my fabled number ten one with the Treq behind two DLF’s and it’s clear to see that Kevin is much better than all of the players I used on that challenge.

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Brilliant. 

Thanks Rob, I probably would’ve continued on and finished the season last night if he hadn’t suffered that injury. We’ll get it done tonight though.

[Aaron Thornton]

Cracking score so far, blew myne out of the water, nice one mate. 

[Ian]

2 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

Cracking score so far, blew myne out of the water, nice one mate. 

Thank you Aaron, your score is really good, it’s just a shame Kevin seems so injury prone.

[Ian]

I was going to post the finale to my Baros career tonight and then do this tomorrow but a change of plan as I’d prefer to get this one finalised first.

We saw last time that Kevin was doing well but had suffered a couple of month long injuries and was going to be out for the whole of April so the team would need to find a way to perform without him and they did a reasonable job as they kept us in the Champions League and got us into the FA Cup final after beating neighbours Man Utd in the semi.

 

Kevin was fit for our game against Aston Villa on the 2nd of May which I‘d hoped he would be to give us four league games to try and get him more goals and assists. The date of the 4th of April from when I took the screenshot of his injury wasn’t actually the date the injury occurred but the date I discovered it and I had to look back over my inbox to get the shot so I did think there’d be a chance he could make the game on the 2nd and luckily he could. Anyway, he had a great game in scoring a hat trick and assisting another goal in a 7-0 victory.

 

He assisted another goal in the next game against Bayern in the Champions League but when Fabinho got himself sent off I decided to sub him to keep him fresh for the next few league games.

 

The next game was against Wolves and after scoring early on in the game he proceeded to get injured again much to my utter disgust.

 

I was wondering what kind of injury would greet me after the game and I had that hope that it would turn into one of those non injuries but unfortunately it was another month long one and essentially the end of this challenge attempt.

 

We battled on without our main man though and won the FA Cup but couldn’t add the Champions League to our haul as Barca narrowly beat us in the final after Aguero suffered an injury early on in the game. These were the final few fixtures and I think if you look through all of the fixtures of the season we just needed a 1-0 and a 9-0 result to complete the Gündogan challenge with the main man himself which would’ve been nice.

 

Here’s my final manager history screenshot with all of the finals under the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

Here’s my final managers profile.

 

Kevin ended up with 25 league goals and 29 assists to give us a challenge score of 54 so I’m happy enough as I did fail to read the challenge properly and he suffered a few injuries. I won’t be continuing on for the peak years challenge mainly because of that last injury. You can’t help injuries I know but it just seems like he will pick up a good few plus he’ll soon be 29 and at his age one of those injuries could really hit his attributes in a way so they don’t come back up.

Spoiler

 

All in all it’s been a very enjoyable challenge and it’s clear how great of a player Kevin is and it’s a privilege to manage him. If you could add my score of 54 to the leaderboard @Rob I’d be grateful.

 

Thanks for reading and for all comments.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Ian

[FuddledFox]

Great score that Ian despite those injuries and the slight error on the rules.

I think you should work out your GpG as well as you might find it’s pretty high (top) of this leaderboard as well.

 

[Rob]

Well done Ian. Great score. 

[Ian]

46 minutes ago, Foxy said:

Great score that Ian despite those injuries and the slight error on the rules.

I think you should work out your GpG as well as you might find it’s pretty high (top) of this leaderboard as well.

 

Thank you Foxy, I’ll have a look now and post it in the challenge thread as it’ll definitely beat my previous best I’m sure. Be lucky if there’s a leaderboard without my name on by the end of the year the way I’m going 😂

45 minutes ago, Rob said:

Well done Ian. Great score. 

Thank you Rob, nice challenge and a great player he is. I am a bit annoyed though that he ended on 84 in total in all comps and one behind Jeff. A different league and the injuries I know but I’d hoped he’d beat the total non the less the way he was going. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Ian

[Rob]

Jeff is obviously the best midfielder in the world. 

[Kanegan]

Massive score there @Ian. Well done.

[Cockers2505]

Well done @ian a brilliant attempt at this, knowing you not just your first or last attempt 🤣

 

[Rich]

Amazing score, well done 👍

[Ian]

3 hours ago, Rob said:

Jeff is obviously the best midfielder in the world. 

I think you’re probably right Rob.

2 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Massive score there @Ian. Well done.

Thank you Kane.

2 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Well done @ian a brilliant attempt at this, knowing you not just your first or last attempt 🤣

 

Thank you Cockers, he did very well in my system. I’m not sure I’m going to try this one again though mainly because it seems Kevin is quite injury prone and that last injury was annoying after he’d just came back. I messed up though thinking it was goals and assists in all comps rather than league only so I suppose if you just play him in league games it might help when it comes to the injuries.

26 minutes ago, RichDave32 said:

Amazing score, well done 👍

Thank you Dave.

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to my second attempt at The Kevin De Bruyne Challenge. I say second attempt but due to messing up the first time and misreading the rules you could really call it my first. My plan was to use the exact same system but pick a first team including Kevin to play as many league games as possible and a second team for all of the cup games. I don’t usually rotate in that way so it did interest me which was the main reason I had another go.

Let’s see how it went.

 

Transfers

We made very similar transfers to last time with the only different incomings being Higuain instead of Milik who we couldn’t get and Umtiti instead of Koulibali as main back up centre back.

Spoiler

 

Team Results

The league was won very comfortably but the only other cup success was the EFL cup so that could indicate we did a good job of picking our best first team for the league games.

 

Fixtures

Only one draw in all competitions this year and a good few defeats so you could say it was a case of all or nothing.

Spoiler

 

Manager

Not as many goals as on the last attempt.

Spoiler

 

Kevin

Kevin scored a good few hat tricks but managed better in one game against Burnley where he hit four so we’ll call that the highlight game.

 

Just two little injuries this year for Kevin so he ended up only missed 3 league games.

Spoiler

 

He did very well in scoring 52 goals and 23 assists in the league so we’re happy with that. I can’t deny the high goals compared to assists has been bugging me as it was exactly the same system as last time out where they were almost identical so I just can’t work it out. I was wondering if it might be something to do with my preferred league line up but didn’t see the need to change anything as he was doing fine in total throughout. You can see with the 8.94 avr that I’ll be hard pressed to beat this with this system so not sure I’ll try again now as I’m happy enough with this effort.

 

Player Stats

You can see Kevin has been very much the main man this season.

Spoiler

 

Formation

This was my formation and preferred first team that played most of the time in the league barring injuries. The only debate I had was whether to go for Gündogan instead of Wjinaldum and did switch that up for a few games but it was Gini the vast majority of the time. Belotti was injured a bit so Higuain had to come in and he doesn’t quite have the same aerial as Belotti or Milik who I used last time as second choice so that could’ve hindered Kevins assists but guess we’ll never know now.

Spoiler

 

If you could please add my total of 75 to the leaderboard @Rob I’d be grateful. I actually thought your score was 77 rather than 75 so had no idea until this morning that we are level. I’d prefer to be second to be honest so I’d rather you put me there but others will be along to beat the total anyway I’m sure.

 

Thank you all for following.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Ian

[Rob]

I will put you first as you played less league games.

Well done! 

[Woody]

Well done @Ian 👍

[Ian]

6 hours ago, Rob said:

I will put you first as you played less league games.

Well done! 

Thank you Rob, hopefully more will come along and give the challenge a go. Although he’s a top top player you don’t really get the chance to use him that often on most of the challenges as it never makes financial sense to buy him or keep him if you start something with Man City.

1 hour ago, Woody said:

Well done @Ian 👍

Thank you Woody, he performed very well.

[Scratch]

Great stuff Ian, glad he did better injury wise in the second pass, great score. So tense at the top of the leaderboard too.  

[GianniVesparinni]

That looks great @Ian 52 league goals, unbelievable. And what a beautiful formation did you use in your last attempt. I might try that one for a late bloomer/Goals per game challenge. Do you mind that I use this formation? 

[Rob]

17 minutes ago, GianniVesparinni said:

That looks great @Ian 52 league goals, unbelievable. And what a beautiful formation did you use in your last attempt. I might try that one for a late bloomer/Goals per game challenge. Do you mind that I use this formation? 

You have got to use your own tactic for challenges.

[Ian]

On 13/08/2020 at 09:58, Scratch said:

Great stuff Ian, glad he did better injury wise in the second pass, great score. So tense at the top of the leaderboard too.  

Thanks Scratch, yes he did better and with only playing him in the league games he managed loads of full games. Still got me stumped as to why he scored much more goals compared to assists this time with the exact same system and practically the same players but can’t be helped and I suppose Kevin was played differently. I may use this challenge to test a few different things later though.

2 hours ago, GianniVesparinni said:

That looks great @Ian 52 league goals, unbelievable. And what a beautiful formation did you use in your last attempt. I might try that one for a late bloomer/Goals per game challenge. Do you mind that I use this formation? 

It’s a nice system that can work very well. You should really use your own for the challenges though but nothing to stop you using it to test things and it might give you ideas to try different things.

2 hours ago, Rob said:

You have got to use your own tactic for challenges.

This is what makes sharing tactics a bit of a grey area for me. I mean there’s a few of us on here that no doubt have ended up coming up with very similar systems which is to be expected with the testing we do and that’s fine.

It’s when you get new or not so active members just copying the tactic and then using them for the challenges which seems a bit disrespectful to me. On the other hand if I had just not shared it then there’d be no problem but then I’ve no problem with viewers who maybe don’t want to be active just using the systems for their own private saves which is probably the only reason I ever post tactics in truth. 

[Scratch]

33 minutes ago, Ian said:

This is what makes sharing tactics a bit of a grey area for me. I mean there’s a few of us on here that no doubt have ended up coming up with very similar systems which is to be expected with the testing we do and that’s fine.

It’s when you get new or not so active members just copying the tactic and then using them for the challenges which seems a bit disrespectful to me. On the other hand if I had just not shared it then there’d be no problem but then I’ve no problem with viewers who maybe don’t want to be active just using the systems for their own private saves which is probably the only reason I ever post tactics in truth. 

Yeah, the way I've always looked at it is that you can't just outright copy someone else's tactic.

I think it's fine to take a bit from this tactic and a bit from that tactic and mesh it together into something that's your own. Or even take someone's tactic as a starting point and use it to build your own - but you have to make some real changes, not just change one role or something.

Just don't copy the whole tactic. I think that's where the line should be.