Career Ian attempted the Messi and Ronaldo Challenge

[Ian]

8 hours ago, Rob said:

Excellent score Ian. I especially loved the quirky tactic created specifically for this challenge and the players involved, which demonstrates how you should really play this game. 

Thank you, I did enjoy this one and I may have another run through at some point with some different squad players and maybe with the odd tweak to the system.

7 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

Yeah I found the WM in my system to be the weak spot defensively, he is a a world class Winger, but most goals we conceded were balls played long into the right channel, over my WM's head, going forward though he often had the most assists and key passes in a match, so I have a decision to make, keep him where he is for the attack or drop him back for the defence, what would you do? 

Yeah, I found we were weakest defensively down that side as expected. At Barca with top attacking talent it’s like you can just overpowered the opposition so it’s not much of an issue but at a lesser club it almost certainly will be I’m sure. I suppose putting him back to the wing back position should help in theory and it would make this tactic then look fairly balanced on paper but I do like the WM role at the moment so a bit of a conundrum. Maybe the CM could be moved back to the DM position just behind which might help but then he’s probably going to get crap ratings based on the DM ratings bug.

[Aaron Thornton]

3 minutes ago, Ian said:

Thank you, I did enjoy this one and I may have another run through at some point with some different squad players and maybe with the odd tweak to the system.

Yeah, I found we were weakest defensively down that side as expected. At Barca with top attacking talent it’s like you can just overpowered the opposition so it’s not much of an issue but at a lesser club it almost certainly will be I’m sure. I suppose putting him back to the wing back position should help in theory and it would make this tactic then look fairly balanced on paper but I do like the WM role at the moment so a bit of a conundrum. Maybe the CM could be moved back to the DM position just behind which might help but then he’s probably going to get crap ratings based on the DM ratings bug.

Yeah I pondered possibly moving a CM to DM, but like you said the ratings bug is soo frustrating, gonna have a look at it again before the F1 highlights come on, giving me half an hour, I'll get back to you if I spot something. 

[Scratch]

Great stuff Ian, did massively well. Both players obviously class despite their advanced age. Shame about the Messi injuries in the first season, but boy did he bounce back from that in the second season!

Interesting tactic too, thanks for sharing, might inspire me to give the offside trap a go (haven't used it for years, but I have players who should be able to work it). 

I wonder if your right sided defensive 'woes' (not that you can call them that!) would be improved by turning the WM into a Defensive Winger? Maybe they'd get back a bit on defence? Hard to know. Also I've used a single CD and right WB (last line) as a back two and that's worked well, but once again in a "I occasionally ship a few goals, but no matter because I just scored 6"scenario. But yeah, you are already in that scenario so no need to worry about it!

[Kanegan]

Fantastic stuff Ian and a great looking tactic. I have never used WM before, I normally employ them as W so curious to see it did well here. 

[Ian]

23 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

Yeah I pondered possibly moving a CM to DM, but like you said the ratings bug is soo frustrating, gonna have a look at it again before the F1 highlights come on, giving me half an hour, I'll get back to you if I spot something. 

Yeah, loads of possible ways to go with this, it’s just trying then all that takes time.

7 hours ago, Scratch said:

Great stuff Ian, did massively well. Both players obviously class despite their advanced age. Shame about the Messi injuries in the first season, but boy did he bounce back from that in the second season!

Interesting tactic too, thanks for sharing, might inspire me to give the offside trap a go (haven't used it for years, but I have players who should be able to work it). 

I wonder if your right sided defensive 'woes' (not that you can call them that!) would be improved by turning the WM into a Defensive Winger? Maybe they'd get back a bit on defence? Hard to know. Also I've used a single CD and right WB (last line) as a back two and that's worked well, but once again in a "I occasionally ship a few goals, but no matter because I just scored 6"scenario. But yeah, you are already in that scenario so no need to worry about it!

Thank you Scratch, it would’ve been interesting to see how Messi would’ve done if it’d been the first season where he went without injury as his attributes were much better then. Of course, Ronaldo also declined the second season which might’ve helped Messi shine more I suppose.

I always think the offside trap works well with top quality defenders so when I’m going for tactics that are a bit strange which requires top quality centre backs, I’ve just always then put it on. I rarely ever use it with a less than great team though.

I did think of the defensive winger and may well try it later. With the top teams it seems you can get away with a lot of things you really shouldn’t in truth but I still think sometimes in the bigger games and Champions League games in particular you get punished more often than you would if you went more balanced. When I go with ultra attacking stuff on longer careers, my CL record is not so great, maybe using a different system for the later rounds might be something I could try but the thing is, it’s so hard to predict when those poor games will occur as most of the time everything is fine.

3 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Fantastic stuff Ian and a great looking tactic. I have never used WM before, I normally employ them as W so curious to see it did well here. 

Thank you Kane, I enjoyed the system in action and even watched the highlights on this one which must say something as I rarely ever do. I’ve only just started trying the WM role due to having an idea for my IF system and I now really like the role.

[smoggy90]

Great score mate, I have just finished my season 1 which I will try and post today but your score will take some beating!

[Ian]

49 minutes ago, smoggy90 said:

Great score mate, I have just finished my season 1 which I will try and post today but your score will take some beating!

Thank you Smoggy, it seems to be a fairly decent system. I knew I wanted Messi in the T role as I’ve had great fun with that role this year and it is Messi after all. I’ve used the DLF with the T a few times so I had the two main men set and just worked around it. I was happy enough with it all but if I did it again, there’d be a couple of things I’d change so I may give it another run through at some point.

Look forward to seeing your attempt.