Career Ian goes for Badge 04 - Three Wise Men

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to my attempt at the Three Wise Men challenge created by @Rob which can be found here. In simple terms; we’re going for goals from Jesus with three players providing the assists.

We could manage any club so I chose Liverpool and preceded to try and sign Jesus. In the end I signed him for £40m and Thiago which I thought was pretty reasonable. My initial thought was to just go with City but having looked at the starting squad I just felt that they’d need more work in terms of squad building so Liverpool it was, a squad I know well.

 

I decided my three wise men would be Salah, Mané and Firmino and I don’t think they need much of an introduction.

Spoiler

 

I decided to go with the following system. Mané would be my out of position playmaker which is a bit of a risk but he does have good attributes for the role so I was intrigued as to how he’d do. I decided not to try and retrain him to the position as I could just see him complaining so he’ll stay red there all season I’d say.

 

I’ve got about 10 games to play and I think it’s going to be quite close so I just have to hope we can make it.

Thanks for reading and I’ll be back with the full season update tomorrow.

[Rich]

Good luck Ian, interesting choice of position for Mane but he’s so good I’m sure he’ll relish it in there 😁

[Rob]

I love this approach! Letting Thiago go as part of the deal and playing Mane in the role most would play Thiago is lovely. 

[Kanegan]

Good luck with this Ian. I am using Liverpool too for this challenge but the players chosen are different. 

[Ian]

12 hours ago, RichD said:

Good luck Ian, interesting choice of position for Mane but he’s so good I’m sure he’ll relish it in there 😁

Thanks Richard, that was my hope as he certainly has the attributes.

11 hours ago, Rob said:

I love this approach! Letting Thiago go as part of the deal and playing Mane in the role most would play Thiago is lovely. 

Thank you Rob, I tried Thiago in a similar system when the game came out and I just couldn’t get away with him. I looked at a few things to get four going but just didn’t fancy any of them and thought with the fixtures pile up and potential injuries that Mané may well end up playing further forward plenty anyway.

7 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Good luck with this Ian. I am using Liverpool too for this challenge but the players chosen are different. 

Thank you Kane, your player choices are better than mine. I’ve taken the easier approach and just gone for the readymade superstars.

[Ian]

Season Update

I had picked my team, chosen wise men and then had to build the squad to fit the system. Luckily, Liverpool’s starting squad really suited the system so business was minimal with just a few incomings. A couple of central midfielders arrived in Partey and Brozovic, Mendy was brought in as a backup to Robertson on the left and Jesus had to be bought and that was it.

Spoiler

 

We won all trophies except for the Champions League where PSG beat us in the semi final. We fired blanks in the first leg at home and I had an idea that that would be that. I also thought we were going to lose the League Cup final after going two down to Chelsea fairly early on but we fought back and the League wasn’t great but decent enough season really.

Spoiler

 

I said it was going to be close at the end of the introduction but it ended up being somewhat comfortable as the target was reached with a few games to spare. It always looked on but when the fixtures were piling up towards the end, coupled with a few blank games you start to think you’re going to run out of games. You’re just looking for one big game and that finally came against Burnley to more or less seal the deal.

 

We ended with 52 goals from Jesus and a total of 58 assists from the wise men to give us a total of 110 points. There were a few little injuries throughout with Salah and Firmino suffering the most but it could’ve been much worse I guess and Mané ended up playing practically the whole season in the AP role and did pretty well.

Spoiler

 

Here’s the final managers profile.

 

We got the job done and even though it wasn’t so spectacular I’m happy enough. I may revisit this later as I’m just not happy with the system and have a few ideas as to what is going wrong but for now I’ll be moving onto the Bruno one as I have a different system in mind for that. Well, I’ve started it actually and I’m up to January so I’ll be back later with that.

Score

Jesus: 52 goals

Salah: 23 assists

Mané: 15 assists

Firmino: 20 assists

Total: 110 points

 

Thank you for reading.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Ian

[Rob]

Well done Ian. Another badge in the box. The EPL is a horrible league to start with, what with the fixture pile up if you do well.

On a side note, Partey and Brozovic are sexy this year. Those two and Goretzka are transfer value go-tos IMO.

[broodje kip]

Impressive score that Ian

[Rich]

Well done Ian, badge achieved, boys done well 😁

[Scratch]

Great work, that's a great score. Thought about using Liverpool for this too as I think I prefer their squad to Man City, but in the end I went overseas for all 4 of my attempts.

How did Brozovic go for you? I used to sign him a fair bit, but this year he has a bit too much red in the team influence section for me, so I've been avoiding him (even sold him when I was at Inter), so keen to see how he actually pans out if he's used.

[FuddledFox]

Great score Ian.

Out of interest would you use Salah again in this challenge as he got a good number of assists but he was clearly a goal threat as well?

[smoggy90]

Great score Ian, good work and I like the use of Mane as a CAM. I’ve not tried a treq and SS combo before, might be one to experiment with. 

[Ian]

5 hours ago, Rob said:

Well done Ian. Another badge in the box. The EPL is a horrible league to start with, what with the fixture pile up if you do well.

On a side note, Partey and Brozovic are sexy this year. Those two and Goretzka are transfer value go-tos IMO.

Thank you Rob, it is pretty rough going and I sometimes think it would be better to just go out of some of the cups in the earlier rounds.

I used to often use Brozovic last year as a go to along with Gundogan but don’t really remember seeing Partey much. Goretzka was pretty ridiculous when I used him in one of the earlier badges, I didn’t really ever use him last year but I think that might’ve been because he was hard to sign whereas this year he seems to more obtainable.

5 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Impressive score that Ian

Thank you Lord Danish.

4 hours ago, RichD said:

Well done Ian, badge achieved, boys done well 😁

Thanks Richard, yes job done and now onto the next.

4 hours ago, Scratch said:

Great work, that's a great score. Thought about using Liverpool for this too as I think I prefer their squad to Man City, but in the end I went overseas for all 4 of my attempts.

How did Brozovic go for you? I used to sign him a fair bit, but this year he has a bit too much red in the team influence section for me, so I've been avoiding him (even sold him when I was at Inter), so keen to see how he actually pans out if he's used.

Thanks Scratch, I looked quickly at Man City but just didn’t like the starting squad so went the lazy route at Liverpool as I knew the squad was more readymade. I just find their squad is so strong right across the board and it’s usually just a few extra midfielders I find myself going for with a backup to Robertson on the left as I’m not sure about how good that Greek lad is.

Brozovic did well here but I have noticed the red stuff and he’s down as unprofessional which I’ve just noticed on my new Bruno save as I went for him again there. He played mainly as a CM here but occasionally in the other roles. I’ve got him in the DLP role at DM on my new Bruno save though.

4 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

Great score Ian.

Out of interest would you use Salah again in this challenge as he got a good number of assists but he was clearly a goal threat as well?

Thank you Mr Fox, I think I’d go with some different players and a different system if I went again. I mean, it’s very hard to stop Salah from scoring and putting him in the T role was probably not the best way to go about things as it’s such a powerful role I find.

3 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great score Ian, good work and I like the use of Mane as a CAM. I’ve not tried a treq and SS combo before, might be one to experiment with. 

Cheers Smoggy, it’s the fourth player with this that gave me a headache as I find targeting three much easier. I just hoped there’d be enough goals with them all involved to get it done and it did work so I’m happy enough. 

[Titjes]

Well done @Ian, great score 😉

[Ian]

3 minutes ago, Titjes said:

Well done @Ian, great score 😉

Thank you Tits.

[Kanegan]

Thats a great score Ian. I am in January in my own attempt and things have died a little after the initial flurry.

[Ashez]

Nicely done @Ian! 

I had a Liverpool attempt but I focused on Firmino, Minamino and Trent. Minamino really impressed me but I didn't get much out of Bobby in the tactic I created unfortunately. It was a lopsided 2-2-3-2-1 with Trent at RW and Robbo at LWB. Glad to see LFC would have worked though, I've used Salah so many times recently though that I fancied a change and to focus on Bobby abit, while it failed it did inspire something else haha.  

[Ian]

3 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Thats a great score Ian. I am in January in my own attempt and things have died a little after the initial flurry.

Thanks Kane, yeah it can often go like that especially with the fixture schedule being how it is in the first season. I found Jesus to be ok but he would have plenty of spells where he wouldn’t score but having Salah in particular behind him probably didn’t help.

2 hours ago, Ashez said:

Nicely done @Ian! 

I had a Liverpool attempt but I focused on Firmino, Minamino and Trent. Minamino really impressed me but I didn't get much out of Bobby in the tactic I created unfortunately. It was a lopsided 2-2-3-2-1 with Trent at RW and Robbo at LWB. Glad to see LFC would have worked though, I've used Salah so many times recently though that I fancied a change and to focus on Bobby abit, while it failed it did inspire something else haha.  

Thank you Ashez, sounds like an interesting system. I had a few little ideas and it is interesting trying to set things up for three assisting one striker but in the end I’ve just gone boring and tried something that I was sure would get most of the goals and assists going to the front three in particular. Just then hoping there’d be enough of everything to go round and luckily there was. I feel I need to give this a better go though, I’m happy enough with the score but not the system.

[Scratch]

15 hours ago, Ian said:

Brozovic did well here but I have noticed the red stuff and he’s down as unprofessional which I’ve just noticed on my new Bruno save as I went for him again there. He played mainly as a CM here but occasionally in the other roles. I’ve got him in the DLP role at DM on my new Bruno save though.

Thanks for the screenshots - he's surely a good player and I guess having one or two players that have the bad dynamic stuff is probably fine. I'm just in the habit now of going for players who don't have that, but I'm probably worrying too much! 😄