Career Scratch Tries The 3 Kings [Attempt 5 Complete]

[Aaron Thornton]

9 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Thanks mate!

I haven't really had it as a problem before now. But mine seems slightly different from what you had. I've seen people like @RichD and maybe yourself talking about needing more than 28 players, but I had 32 which should have been more than enough. But when I went to the Squad Depth screen some of the positions weren't green enough...

I think what happened is by bringing in KDB and Salah in particular, I made everyone else's staff assigned star ratings drop slightly (as they aren't as good in comparison), so then the 3 Kings weren't happy that we didn't have any top rated right backs for example. If I'd brought in lesser rated kings, the right backs would have had higher star rating and everyone would be happy. But once I got the better players, they weren't gonna be happy until I brought in TAA! 😄

So I think it was more about quality rather than quantity - I'm just guessing that, but that's what seems to fit what happened for me.

Ah I see, well at least the feature isn't one dimensional, so that's something 

[Rob]

Excellent score for a first, and pseudo test, attempt.

The sadist in me does enjoy seeing the scoring mechanism tie you up in knots!

[Dai_]

I had the squad depth issue throughout my attempt. I roll with just 2 of every position and a few loans to cover different areas. I always have. This new feature is infuriating. I'm getting it in every save I have. But, it's not really affecting my results or player performances. Or, maybe I just haven't noticed that it is?

 

That's a good effort @Scratch considering the obvious issues. I had problems with Neymar in the MSN challenge so wouldn't go near him again. I'm sure, if you used other players than Neymar and Salah (his 14 teamwork seems very generous & obviously wrong 🤣) you'd smash this.

[broodje kip]

Great score that mate. 32 players are quite a lot to me. 25 at max for me. 

[Scratch]

4 minutes ago, Rob said:

The sadist in me does enjoy seeing the scoring mechanism tie you up in knots!

I bet it does Mr Grinch! 

Actually it's pretty good because it really ramps up the weight behind things somehow. If it had been contributions, then if he passes it on and a king scores, you'd still get 2 points, but with this system it's nothing.

added 0 minutes later

6 minutes ago, broodje kip said:

Great score that mate. 32 players are quite a lot to me. 25 at max for me. 

Thanks mate! I generally have 28ish, two full teams and a consistent bench, but this time I kep adding people trying to fix the problem.

[Scratch]

9 minutes ago, Dai_ said:

I had the squad depth issue throughout my attempt. I roll with just 2 of every position and a few loans to cover different areas. I always have. This new feature is infuriating. I'm getting it in every save I have. But, it's not really affecting my results or player performances. Or, maybe I just haven't noticed that it is?

 

That's a good effort @Scratch considering the obvious issues. I had problems with Neymar in the MSN challenge so wouldn't go near him again. I'm sure, if you used other players than Neymar and Salah (his 14 teamwork seems very generous & obviously wrong 🤣) you'd smash this.

Thanks mate. I've had both Neymar and Salah provide 30+ assists before, but I have heard people with the same experience as you - and now I've experienced it first hand... 😄

For me the problem was that it was the best players in the team who had the problem with depth, and they were leaders on the Hierachy page. On their Relationship page most of them had red for Morale. As a result the team value for Morale went from A to F. Individual Morale seems okay, so I'm not sure what effect it really had, but our form slumped around the same time that happened, so I thought it was likely the cause. No way of knowing however...

[Kanegan]

Fantastic score mate. I am just starting on the badges so can't wait to try all these brilliant challenges.

[Scratch]

8 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Fantastic score mate. I am just starting on the badges so can't wait to try all these brilliant challenges.

Thanks mate. They are a lot of fun, but they are getting in the way of me playing a longer save! 🤣

[Scratch]

Well, I said I'd try again at a more stable club, but look what happened when I tried:

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Scratch

[Aaron Thornton]

1 hour ago, Scratch said:

Well, I said I'd try again at a more stable club, but look what happened when I tried:

 

😂😂 Nice try mate, but Jesus is smarter than you think

[Scratch]

28 minutes ago, Aaron Thornton said:

😂😂 Nice try mate, but Jesus is smarter than you think

I don't know. Jesus, Joelinton, ASM and Almiron? They'd win it all!! As it is, the poor lad is stuck at Man City, who are going nowhere fast...

[Scratch]

Okay... So using the King of Brazil, the King of Belgium and the King of Eygpt didn't work...

Time for a new approach:

Introducing The German Princes

    

Coming soon at a club yet to be announced (but unlikely to be near you)...

[Aaron Thornton]

CHINA!!!!! 

[Rob]

3 hours ago, Scratch said:

Okay... So using the King of Brazil, the King of Belgium and the King of Eygpt didn't work...

Time for a new approach:

Introducing The German Princes

    

Coming soon at a club yet to be announced (but unlikely to be near you)...

Always rely on the Germans. You will never go wrong.

2 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

CHINA!!!!! 

Whenever I read that word I always say it like Trump does, but I thought the same.

[FuddledFox]

4 hours ago, Scratch said:

Coming soon at a club yet to be announced (but unlikely to be near you)...

You mean you aren’t managing Bishops Cleeve!?! 

[smoggy90]

Cracking score mate, and great looking setup. I've seen a few people mention the update now and it seems to have made a mess of my two at the back formation as well. I don't like blaming updates but i had started a TT which was flying and now is struggling. Back to the drawing board with it i think. 

With the squad depth i signed about half a dozen 'reasonable' free agents which seemed to help, they never played for me though so not an ideal solution.

[Scratch]

6 hours ago, Aaron Thornton said:

CHINA!!!!! 

Current Status: busy starting a China save to see if Jesus can be signed there!!

LOL, I bet he can't. If he could be that would be the place to do it!

added 0 minutes later

3 hours ago, Rob said:

Always rely on the Germans. You will never go wrong.

Well it can't be any worse than last time! This bunch will be reliable for sure.

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

You mean you aren’t managing Bishops Cleeve!?! 

Sadly not this time around, although we did sign them up as an affiliate, so watch for an influx of foreign types in the village next time you pop into the Co-op...

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Cracking score mate, and great looking setup. I've seen a few people mention the update now and it seems to have made a mess of my two at the back formation as well. I don't like blaming updates but i had started a TT which was flying and now is struggling. Back to the drawing board with it i think. 

With the squad depth i signed about half a dozen 'reasonable' free agents which seemed to help, they never played for me though so not an ideal solution.

Thanks mate. Yeah, I think I updated before I started this, but now I can't remember now. But certainly the update messed a lot of people's tactics. For me though, I still haven't got one that really works well this year, so it's situation normal for me! 🙂

I've started trying to sign promising youngsters who will be happy to sit on the bench, but I gotta say it's a bit over the top..

[Scratch]

So... The German Princes... Havertz, Amiri and Maier, 3 players who I've had a lot of success with before. I figured they'd have to do better than the 3 Kings I used last time. Let's see how they did!

 

The Club

This time I've gone to Inter - a strong club in a weak-ish league, with a settled and stable team of profesional hard workders...

 

Transfers

Spoiler

I expected I wouldn't have to make as many changes to the squad as I did at PSG, but when I got in there, I found I made more changes than I was expecting to. Brozovic was someone I've used before and I was expecting to use him again, but I found him to be unprofessional and not very happy. Nainggolan was someone I used last year, but has just reach the point where he's not going to play for me. 

I brought in a lot of midfielders, some of whom I've eyed off before but never used (Svanberg, Coulibaly, Ricci). I also bought Pau Torress for the first time (but probbaly not last time).

And I bought Vignato, who got 1.2K assists for me last year - he's on the underdeveloped side, but I was thinking of using him as a Prince, until I realised I had 2 Germain Princes, so I pushed him to bench and signed Maier as the third player instead. Probably a mistake, but you can't get in the way of a good theme...

 

Tactics

Honestly I was all over the place. I tried 2 at the back, then moved to 3 at the back, then 4 at the back. I tried the 3 kings in the AMC positions behind Jesus, I tried 2 Ws, I tried one as a Treq next to Jesus with an AM and W behind them. I tried Jesus as a TM and I tried him as a P. In the end I settled for the final third of the season (although changed  him back to TM.):

Seemed to work alright, getting us consistently 12+ chances with often 3 or 4 going in. I had other tactics that worked way better one week and not at all the following week... Still haven't settled on anything yet. All over the place this year. As I type this, I'm thinking about fusing this tactic with my 2KC one from last year, but... who knows...

 

Results

A mixed season - we one the league, but only just, we won the Italian Cup, but we got knocked out of the Champions League by Red Bull Leipzieg at the 1st knock out round:

 

Injuries

A few this year.

Spoiler

• I missed the actual notification (or maybe he had the injury when I signed him), but Amiri missed the start of the season with an injury.
• Jesus missed a month.
• Maier missed 2 weeks.

 

The Lads

The lads looked like this:

Spoiler

 

Points

Here's how they did:

Spoiler

Here's the overview:

• Jesus did well despite the injury, with 52 goals in 40 games (52 points), better than my last attempt where he had less than 1gpg.
• Amiri did well with 31 assists from 44 games (31 points), as I expected.
• Maier did okay with 16 assists from 45 games (16 points), which is about what I expected from my third king.
• Havertz... sucked... with only 11 assists in 47 games (11 points), which was horrible, and was not expected, considering he got 33 assists for me in my Chelsea Ex-Wonderkids save.

 

So... adding that up gives me a total of 110 points - 2 short of my last attempt. So no need for @Rob to update the leader board.

Sort of feels like a waste of time, but maybe the tactical evolution will help future saves. And I guess even though I had less points, when you consider there are fewer games in Italy (only 1 cup and it only takes 5 games to win it) and the fact we were knocked out oif the CL early and had some key injuries - well it feels like the 110 points was a better return than the 112 points last time. 

Anyway, it's done for now and I'm not sure what's next...

 

[Rich]

Unlucky with the injuries scratch! It’s an interesting challenge this one and the hardest I’d say. I want to try again as well. Look forward to seeing what you do next 😁

[broodje kip]

Oh man....  very unlucky for Havertz, such a low score from him.

[Kanegan]

Such a great score again @Scratch

[Dai_]

I know you like your wheeling and dealing but it would be interesting to see your results with the City players using that tactic. I took the easy route (apart from using Foden) and that's why my score was quite good.

That's still a good score considering the circumstances and the uselessness of young, Kai. I've found in previous games when buying him that he takes time to settle. For me anyway. Then he becomes a beast.

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, RichD said:

Unlucky with the injuries scratch! It’s an interesting challenge this one and the hardest I’d say. I want to try again as well. Look forward to seeing what you do next 😁

Thanks mate. I've accidentally started this one again now, but with a different tactic. Well actually not that different...

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Oh man....  very unlucky for Havertz, such a low score from him.

Yeah, it's the first time ever he hasn't delivered for me. Maybe because he couldn't speak the language? But then neither could Amiri or Jesus or Maier... It's a mystery.

17 hours ago, Dai_ said:

I know you like your wheeling and dealing but it would be interesting to see your results with the City players using that tactic. I took the easy route (apart from using Foden) and that's why my score was quite good.

That's still a good score considering the circumstances and the uselessness of young, Kai. I've found in previous games when buying him that he takes time to settle. For me anyway. Then he becomes a beast.

Or actually maybe that's the reason - I know each player has an adaptability score, maybe his is low? I think I will avoid him except in English speaking leagues...

I probably should try with City, but just figured other leagues should be easier.. But I've started again at PSG, so that will have to wait!

added 0 minutes later

18 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Such a great score again @Scratch

Thanks mate, although I'm not that happy with the score! But yeah, could be worse...

[Scratch]

Attempt 3 started back at PSG, using a variation of my 2KC tactic that was working well for me at Celtic. It was very much a winger centric tactic though and I just couldn't get it working with my chosen players (Lemar on the left, Amiri on the right and KDB as AP in the CM line), so I abandoned it after a few months.

I started again at Bayern Munich, using Sane on the left wing and Coman on the right, with KDB in the same role in the middle. I was hoping it would work better given Sane had better crossing and Coman is a natural winger (unlike Amiri) and we got off to a pretty good start - it only took 3 games for Sane and Coman to equal Lemar and Amiri's assists after 17 games in the previous attempt! But from there it dropped off and ultimately I didn't improve my score.

I'll write it up briefly anyway:

 

Transfers

Spoiler

Only 5 this time! What's wrong with me? Well, I was trying to see if it helped with dynamics (and Bayern is pretty strong already). It felt like our early results were better than in previous saves, so maybe it helped? But over the course of the season it didn't seem to really make any difference.

 

Tactic

Gets some assists through the AP, but channels the ball to the wingers and get a decent amount of crosses.

Of course, you need a striker with decent Aerial on the end of that, and this time around, with mentoring and a bit of luck we got Jesus to 17 Aerial (as discussed in General Discussion). It might have actually been counter productive though, because it didn't seem to lead to any more goals from him. Instead, he had stats like this:

Not that many crosses in this game actually, but Jesus went for 34 headers! Not sure where they were coming from. Maybe he is playing keep it up with his head? Or maybe he just runs around the whole park trying to get headers? Who knows - but the end result is he got tired a lot earlier. 

So there is something clearly wrong with the tactic. I think it might have been working better before the last update, but I don't know for sure. Also, in hindsight, I left him as TM for most of the season (after early experimentation with AF and P), but maybe he is heading to other players instead of towards goal. When I did my 1KC, I used AF, so maybe that would have a better balance. Not sure!

 

The Lads

They ended up looking like this:

Spoiler

If you're wondering why Coman looks a little weak, then...

 

Injuries

Spoiler

Coman had a couple of injuries that slowed him right down. Jesus got injured in a match, but no lasting injuries that time. Also, I'm pretty sure he missed a couple of weeks with an injury, but I didn't get a screenshot of it. All of them on low intensity training, but I'm really happy with this given the increase in injuries...

 

Results

We ended up winning everything except the CL, where Chelsea knocked us out in the first round... 

 

Score

Here's the screens for each of the lads:

Spoiler

And the summary screen (Coman only just scraping over the line):

Which leaves us with:

• Jesus: 48 goals
• KDB: 25 assists
• Sane: 23 assists
• Coman: 11 assists

Adding up to a total of 107 points, which is unfortunately 5 lower than my best score, so there is no need to bother Rob to change the leader board. 

I don't want to say the approach was totally wrong - after all in a 38 game league it might have been my best - but it's frustrating that I've come back again and again with this one and can't improve on it.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this now, probably not going to try it again. On to Man Utd now... 🤮

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Scratch

[Rich]

Unlucky with the Conan injury there mate! This is definitely a tough one to go right, it makes me think how the hell did I get what I did 😂

[Aaron Thornton]

1 hour ago, Scratch said:

Attempt 3 started back at PSG, using a variation of my 2KC tactic that was working well for me at Celtic. It was very much a winger centric tactic though and I just couldn't get it working with my chosen players (Lemar on the left, Amiri on the right and KDB as AP in the CM line), so I abandoned it after a few months.

I started again at Bayern Munich, using Sane on the left wing and Coman on the right, with KDB in the same role in the middle. I was hoping it would work better given Sane had better crossing and Coman is a natural winger (unlike Amiri) and we got off to a pretty good start - it only took 3 games for Sane and Coman to equal Lemar and Amiri's assists after 17 games in the previous attempt! But from there it dropped off and ultimately I didn't improve my score.

I'll write it up briefly anyway:

 

Transfers

  Hide contents

Only 5 this time! What's wrong with me? Well, I was trying to see if it helped with dynamics (and Bayern is pretty strong already). It felt like our early results were better than in previous saves, so maybe it helped? But over the course of the season it didn't seem to really make any difference.

 

Tactic

Gets some assists through the AP, but channels the ball to the wingers and get a decent amount of crosses.

Of course, you need a striker with decent Aerial on the end of that, and this time around, with mentoring and a bit of luck we got Jesus to 17 Aerial (as discussed in General Discussion). It might have actually been counter productive though, because it didn't seem to lead to any more goals from him. Instead, he had stats like this:

Not that many crosses in this game actually, but Jesus went for 34 headers! Not sure where they were coming from. Maybe he is playing keep it up with his head? Or maybe he just runs around the whole park trying to get headers? Who knows - but the end result is he got tired a lot earlier. 

So there is something clearly wrong with the tactic. I think it might have been working better before the last update, but I don't know for sure. Also, in hindsight, I left him as TM for most of the season (after early experimentation with AF and P), but maybe he is heading to other players instead of towards goal. When I did my 1KC, I used AF, so maybe that would have a better balance. Not sure!

 

The Lads

They ended up looking like this:

  Hide contents

If you're wondering why Coman looks a little weak, then...

 

Injuries

  Hide contents

Coman had a couple of injuries that slowed him right down. Jesus got injured in a match, but no lasting injuries that time. Also, I'm pretty sure he missed a couple of weeks with an injury, but I didn't get a screenshot of it. All of them on low intensity training, but I'm really happy with this given the increase in injuries...

 

Results

We ended up winning everything except the CL, where Chelsea knocked us out in the first round... 

 

Score

Here's the screens for each of the lads:

  Reveal hidden contents

And the summary screen (Coman only just scraping over the line):

Which leaves us with:

• Jesus: 48 goals
• KDB: 25 assists
• Sane: 23 assists
• Coman: 11 assists

Adding up to a total of 107 points, which is unfortunately 5 lower than my best score, so there is no need to bother Rob to change the leader board. 

I don't want to say the approach was totally wrong - after all in a 38 game league it might have been my best - but it's frustrating that I've come back again and again with this one and can't improve on it.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this now, probably not going to try it again. On to Man Utd now... 🤮

 

Not bad mate at least you hit the benchmark (Unlike this guy) <Myself

 

I've erased this challenge from my mind for the time being. Good effort though mate

[Rob]

This one is destroying people... and I’m starting to feel a bit bad about it. You’ll wake in the middle of the night soon with an epiphany and it’ll be the tactic of the Gods.

Hopefully.