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Career Geordie's UK Goal Challenge - Complete


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As the keen eyed among you may have seen I have commented on @FuddledFox's Germanic goal challenge career saying that I was trying to get my own goal challenge career off and running.

 

Not many of you were around back in 2018/9, but this is the challenge I updated from @BatiGoal's original trilogy as the goal totals were a little off in my mind. I attempted it a couple of times that season, getting close; being in the final England stage, but I couldn't quite get the numbers and then dropped off playing all together:

 

 

So hopefully, I'll be taking what I've learnt from the various completed challenges I've done this year and pushing my players to the limit of their goal scoring abilities.

 

Copypasta-ing from Foxy, here's a quick overview of the UK Goal Challenge

The challenge goes like this.

  • Break the record in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England for most goals in a season.
  • Start with no reputation so that needs to be built up in order to move clubs.
  • The challenge score is my best total from each nation so I can try and beat my own record each season I am in that league but I cannot go back to a league once I have moved on.

These are the records I need to beat and it’s only league goals that count.

  • Wales - 47 goals
  • Scotland - 52 goals
  • N. Ireland - 55 goals
  • England - 60 goals

There is a slight difference in the challenges as I have only included league goals, so only league goals count!

I have also made the challenge "slightly" harder for myself by adding an extra complication of making the decision league's leading goal scorer should be of that country!

  

I will be posting shortly (probably tomorrow) with my progress in Wales. But guesses as to which club and player are welcome and encouraged. 🤔

Edited by geordiekrispy
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Good luck with this Krispy.

I have no idea on the player you have chosen but I’m wondering if you have gone for Barry Town as your club choice because that’s who the current record holder played for.

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Good luck mate!

Id love if you were Carmarthen, my hometown, but they’ve fallen out of the top division so I’ll go for TNS. The player though I have no idea!

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PSNI is the place to be. Great place to groom your youngsters before moving to bigger job and buying them for pennies. Good luck! 

Edited by hhooo
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19 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

Good luck with this Krispy.

I have no idea on the player you have chosen but I’m wondering if you have gone for Barry Town as your club choice because that’s who the current record holder played for.

I have not gone for Barry Town, good shout though. I looked at them but they just didn't tick the boxes for me.

 

18 hours ago, Rich said:

Good luck mate!

Id love if you were Carmarthen, my hometown, but they’ve fallen out of the top division so I’ll go for TNS. The player though I have no idea!

They have dropped out of the Cymru Premier you're correct.

 

17 hours ago, hhooo said:

PSNI is the place to be. Great place to groom your youngsters before moving to bigger job and buying them for pennies. Good luck! 

I have my eye on PSNI when I get to Northern Ireland definitely, they seem one of the strongest sides in the league for sure.

 

16 hours ago, DLC said:

Good luck!

Thanks

16 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Good luck mate!

Thanks

Edited by geordiekrispy
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Well I've kept you all in suspense for long enough...

 

The choice of club was actually harder than I thought it would be. I really wanted to use Cardiff Met Uni as I used them last time and they have the best training grounds by a mile, but their finances aren't great and with no reputation, it's harder to get the better players. Plus they are one of the few amateur clubs in the UK, which would cancel out the better training ground if they're only there every other day.

 

So I decided to go for TNS (I remember when they were Total Network Solutions, not The New Saints), for a couple of reasons.

  1. They've got the best finances in the league, them being secure.
  2. They're in the Euro cup so I fingers crossed I can build some reputation by beating some "bigger" sides in the early stages.
  3. They've got the player I want to use.

Screenshot_20210405-123038.thumb.png.6df15ffb8bd3894961cfe82f1289e43a.png

So in terms of players, there's not that many Welsh strikers that are either for free/cheap, so my thoughts were to try and go to a club which has the best welsh striker already.

And TNS have Adam Roscrow, he's a player I used in my attempts previously so I know he can score goals and he's classed as one of my favourite positions a "forward" so can play up front and on the right wing as an IF if needed.

Screenshot_20210405-123116.thumb.png.71f49826d9a0847d0fb4f08fa90cbb96.png

Screenshot_20210405-123121.thumb.png.09056a1175f53b24c0ffc25ef463b93a.png

 

His attributes are ok (he's only got the 1 red) and he's showing as "needing to play at a higher level to improve" but I don't know if that higher level is higher than the Welsh league, or AFC Wimbledon. I'd prefer a bit more pace and a bit higher shooting, but hopefully we can improve that over the course of the season.

 

Now to try and get the wage budget under control as it's currently in the red and get rid of the dross that is filling the current first team and reserves whilst replacing the outgoing players with better quality, on less wages...

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So season 1 is done, finally!

 

It was a struggle at times as I've commented elsewhere, Roscrow would go on a made run of scoring at least 2 every game for a month or so, then just fail to even have a shot for a couple of games. I have a feeling it's a tiredness/morale issue that we just can't track.

 

I ended up doing an almost complete squad rebuild over the season, mainly due to not being able to shift certain players for ages and then trying to keep the wage bill down.

Transfers

Spoiler

In:

Screenshot_20210410-223400.thumb.png.57fa692c26cdcad8620e68daad8bd934.png

Screenshot_20210410-223406.thumb.png.9c8f27aca6eb6493d2833913f92b276c.png

 

Out:

Screenshot_20210410-223412.thumb.png.d24d57df9a567c54fa837fc7cfa1aaaf.png

Screenshot_20210410-223417.thumb.png.6a96ff70f026c46c3367afdee5b5219b.png

 

The League and Cups

We won the league very comfortably, the cups less so but we managed to snag both of them as well.

Spoiler

 

We did crash out of the Euro Cup at the Fourth Qualifying Round:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210407-160449.thumb.png.c8e692ebb548442ae34496723ab7beb2.png

Screenshot_20210407-175658.thumb.png.d017fe7195025ffd0482674107810143.png

Screenshot_20210407-213606.thumb.png.49cee02e8140b8055ee5bc9b633d2ef1.png

Screenshot_20210412-120856.thumb.png.d1d6fd323ec16d7b7ebc22945a1605cc.png

 

So how did he do? Well it was touch and go up to the last few games, needing 5 goals from the last 4 league games, but he came through in the end pretty comfortably.

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210410-213154.thumb.png.d81a382a7cc05761ca68070d766dfa6f.png

Screenshot_20210410-213157.thumb.png.4d3b7c6cf955d85aad31ada1d6a5b4a1.png

 

Now it's just a case of building up my reputation up from local to try and get a job in Scotland. I'm guessing it'll be at a lower division and attempting to get promoted and then completing that stage of the challenge.

Edited by geordiekrispy
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Wow, that's a lot of goals from Roscrow. You're making me want to give Wales a try now! 😄 Looks like fun.

Hope a nice Scottish job opens up for you. I was thinking it would be hard to get a job there, but I was thinking at the top level - I guess it should be easy enough with a lower division job? Anyway will be fascinating to see where you land. Good luck mate!

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Yeah, Wales is fun. It's fairly easy to get players that are good enough to smash the league. But it's a pain to have to trawl through all the free transfers!

Roscrow seemed to have some awesome purple patches of goals scoring form, and he didn't have a single injury all season. Mainly due to me subbing him off when he got to 80% condition unless he hadn't scored yet.

And there was an annoying habit of me subbing him off when he'd scored two, within 5 minutes we'd get a penalty!

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Great season.

6 hours ago, geordiekrispy said:

And there was an annoying habit of me subbing him off when he'd scored two, within 5 minutes we'd get a penalty!

I feel your pain there as that always seems to happen to me as well!

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So after riding a relative high from last season, we managed to get some more slightly better fresh faces in to the squad, with a quite hefty transfer kitty of nearly 300k!

I knew that playing in all the European qualifying rounds would be tough on the squad as it was so small, so I maybe went a bit overboard, but the team report was still saying that I was missing depth in all positions...

Spoiler

Transfers In:

Screenshot_20210414-072813.thumb.png.d22f3a049df784f58773837313d76506.png

 

Transfers Out:

Screenshot_20210414-072826.thumb.png.b2b7fd6aca2d43a92b6c776146544255.png

 

Roscrow started off really well, having a really good pre-season/euro qualifying, getting into double figures before we even started the season for real. Then this happened in mid-Sept:

Screenshot_20210413-212111.thumb.png.358c0d796bb2ab9a50a23ebd76f3f309.png

 

After that, he took ages to get back to full fitness due to the sheer amount of games that we were playing; league, Europe (spoilers!), the Nathanial MG Cup and the SPFL Trust Trophy, which meant we were playing 2 games a week pretty much every week.

 

Luckily my replacement Welsh strikers were fairly capable in filling in, don't let their attributes fool you;

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210413-131711.thumb.png.5b902e99464678835a2df3758ffda793.pngScreenshot_20210413-131714.thumb.png.e65df657f5c2760e2cd5b2a0df8660ee.png

Screenshot_20210413-131702.thumb.png.3ca8ed2cd822dc7db15c5806cc963a84.pngScreenshot_20210413-131706.thumb.png.839276918e47b646c4ebe2248824d393.png

 

Here's our escapades in our European adventure:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210413-131643.thumb.png.95011650e712ed9e4eee20786fcb9921.png

Screenshot_20210413-080820.thumb.png.4d1edadbe4d5a16fa8dff119d4679142.png

It didn't go well in the group stage though:

Screenshot_20210414-073013.thumb.png.4598780df8276810b24460c37707c1a7.png

Annoyingly the Ajax games were really close, Benfica decided to only turn up for the last 20 minutes when Nunez started smashing in the goals for fun and Man City I feel were playing with us in the first halves and then unleashed all hell in the second halves of our games against them.

 

We won the Nathaniel MG Cup again:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210414-064700.thumb.png.2933a6ff36382a474ecfc1e857435cac.png

 

So the keen eyed among you may have noticed that a lot of these screenshots were taken in February rather than at the end of the season, this is due to the Scottish Premiership teams all deciding to have a changing of the guard in terms of their managers, and so this lead to the Championship teams also following suit, and it trickling down to League 1.

Which meant a lot of applying for roles, with a lot of messages from the board and my Loyalty attribute taking a massive hit...

But it got me a 4 and a half hour drive up the M6

896496236_TNStoAirdrie.thumb.png.60b617151ead5f117e146b64648e67ab.png

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210414-072735.thumb.png.b9c0898ad9793dbba42b66fbdb4ff2d4.png

Screenshot_20210414-073023.thumb.png.fec9a26fd6e76e694c23a3e2da9ab793.png

 

Yes they're in League 1 currently, but are sitting in a good position to get promoted, hopefully automatically!

Screenshot_20210414-074841.thumb.png.d749f40fb3c246e533c8d8f0af84a72f.png

 

So finally, we can see how Roscrow was doing;

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210414-072841.thumb.png.eca4d74f26ea3ec4d2d34eb88bc1ddb2.pngScreenshot_20210414-072845.thumb.png.62e6344e4e0144e7241458b7825ae1a4.png

 

With TNS sitting pretty at the top of the league:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210414-072901.thumb.png.956b795babcb2c010aed454c4986f547.png

And here's my manager profile and history too:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210414-072949.thumb.png.cfaae28a7a45a86de72359bfb9b7d89f.png

Screenshot_20210414-072958.thumb.png.2db047225fbe9baf76f3e95f6d92a383.png

 

So fingers crossed we can secure automatic promotion, then build the squad to push for promotion to the Premiership and have a good Scottish striker banging in the goals to get this stage underway properly!

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Good job in the best country in the UK mate, now on to Scotland and I’m sure you’ll do great. Good luck 👍

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Great job mate, makes sense to take that job, looking forward to seeing how you go there. Will be interested in what you think of the difference in standard between Wales and the Scottish L1.

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Great job mate. Scotland will be a bit tougher, I feel. No doubt you'll smash it though. Keep it up. 👍

39 minutes ago, Rich said:

Good job in the best country in the UK mate, now on to Scotland and I’m sure you’ll do great. Good luck 👍

I think you'll find, it's the best country in the world! 😁

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1 hour ago, Dai_ said:

Great job mate. Scotland will be a bit tougher, I feel. No doubt you'll smash it though. Keep it up. 👍

I think you'll find, it's the best country in the world! 😁

I don’t know why I said UK, I thought straight after I posted why didn’t I say world 😂

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A quick update at the end of the second season (first in Scotland).

The team was quite frankly a mess, over the wage budget, with a load of loan players on 100% wages who hadn't played. Plus massive gaps in the squad, like 1 left back in the entire club, but 6 goalies including 3 on loan!

After a bit of wheeling dealing on the free transfer market and getting rid of some loans I managed to win the league on the final day, with some very strange results along the way. Winning 8-0 one week, then getting beat 3-1 the week after.

Anyway, here's the final league table:

Screenshot_20210415-101219.thumb.png.5a44da31071a2e413bc3a01f27e42b79.png

 

Now to see what transfer budget I have next season in the Championship! And to see if I can get a good Scottish striker in to start scoring and getting used to the team/tactics before, fingers crossed, getting another straight promotion to the Premiership.

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On 14/04/2021 at 17:14, Scratch said:

Great job mate, makes sense to take that job, looking forward to seeing how you go there. Will be interested in what you think of the difference in standard between Wales and the Scottish L1.

Yeah it was definitely a step up, but not a massive one, I think Scottish L2 might be equivalent, but probably more teams in the mix for promotion.

Wales seems a bit like the Scottish Premiership, a couple of teams battling it out each year.

 

1 hour ago, Rich said:

Well done on promotion mate 🥳

Thanks, I was pretty confident in going up, just feared it would be via the playoffs, not as champions!

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Quick update at the mid-point of the my Championship season, this is how the table is looking at the start of Jan:

Screenshot_20210416-092102.thumb.png.d94dda97b08e288c832e32dec361a65e.png

The teams in the the top 4 seem to be my bogey teams (which makes sense as they're Premiership teams really).

 

I couldn't afford to get the strikers I wanted as I didn't have the wage or transfer budget available to me, but I managed to snag this guy who's stats appeared very low, but with some potential to improve. But... he's hit the wall as you can see.

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210416-082114.thumb.png.c18918d49467fd6b91eb4dacbd2b3464.pngScreenshot_20210416-082118.thumb.png.1f52366bab40b899f68a9fd58fbb38dd.png

Screenshot_20210416-082122.thumb.png.e72db9afeca05436dc9e07d4ddbc5e90.pngScreenshot_20210416-064940.thumb.png.c71577925ee38bcaa27d3d7a03df5daa.png

As you can see he's getting 10s in games and playing well, but not improving at all, he's got arrows on his attributes though. So I'm not sure if/when we get promoted he's going to jump by a couple of points or what.

Normally when you get a plateau due to having to mature you don't get the arrows, as far as I'm aware.

I can't even try to improve the coaches and training ground as we don't have the money so I'm stuck with "adequate" training and Bronze (but natural) coaches 😢

I'll do another update once the season is complete, hopefully with promotion being achieved!

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So another quick end of season update:

 

We won the league (yay!) but got knocked out of all the cups (some at the semis).

Screenshot_20210423-165400.thumb.png.22f0049826c7c5b8b2c625ea5bc285cf.png

Screenshot_20210423-165811.thumb.png.7a8715200b9618146f75b84f1bcee562.png

 

Here's the transfers in, out and shook all about:

Spoiler

In:

Screenshot_20210423-165629.thumb.png.8e93ac575a866832cfb9892dcf9c55b5.pngScreenshot_20210423-165634.thumb.png.885c732a481be21cdf3d1a9d5a084b74.png

 

Out:

Screenshot_20210423-165620.thumb.png.869e134ee54bc215ffd86f6cbef7a848.pngScreenshot_20210423-165625.thumb.png.0f44856f531976af61b213f0fb90c691.png

 

Pending:

Screenshot_20210423-165645.thumb.png.d7e960e9effb75d56d6e55bed03b26f4.png

 

Here's how the players did:

Screenshot_20210423-165729.thumb.png.6221bfe4bfb48c02a4b1c5b904e3f223.png

 

I feel like I need some better central midfielders and probably a better striker than Shaw:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210423-165450.thumb.png.cac4026d5d057625a0917fe887fc507f.pngScreenshot_20210423-165453.thumb.png.2dd9ad8a834b4425709ccb3cf508c360.pngScreenshot_20210423-165500.thumb.png.1ea8a6048438caf982cee9327ecb1a59.png

If anyone can tell me what the hell his attributes will do next season let me know as I have no idea, he's peaked but he needs to play at a higher level and has done most of the season? Is he going to have a massive jump when he plays his first game?

 

Either way onwards and upwards to the Premiership!

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Great season mate and that’s a great return for Shaw considering his attributes aren’t great. I have managed players who definitely improve as they go up the leagues, so hopefully the same happens for shaw!

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9 minutes ago, Rich said:

Great season mate and that’s a great return for Shaw considering his attributes aren’t great. I have managed players who definitely improve as they go up the leagues, so hopefully the same happens for shaw!

It's just weird that he's been saying that he needs to play at a higher level for most of the season, but now it's saying he's peaked when he hasn't changed.

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Great job winning the league and for a second there I got excited seeing Shaw had 55 goals, then I realised you only count league goals. Still a promising start. 

I am a bit worried about that Peaked message, could very well be that he's maxed out and won't get better even at a higher level. Only way to know for sure is to see if he improves after playing well in the SPL next season. If I were you though, I'd probably go shopping for a better striker or at least an alternative in case Shaw has maxed out.

Good luck either way (though I guess you're probably already part way through the season).

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So.. first season in the Scottish Premiership... how did we do?

Well let's see who I brought in first:

Spoiler

In:

Screenshot_20210428-150029.thumb.png.009241b30ae6ae4e70197b9a4d37103d.png

Screenshot_20210428-150039.thumb.png.9d0f11c1ca1bd11e750fc6bf4561e6ed.png

 

Out:

Screenshot_20210428-150044.thumb.png.deeba57d5ce927c44ee62a9e8d6e3e5f.png

Screenshot_20210428-150052.thumb.png.ae1ee98d2041cd41a4814ab5412d358d.png

 

 

As you can see I "abused" the bosman ruling quite a lot :) And sold some players who I could get a decent amount for. My wages were not great all last season, so I had to sell and clear some players off the books to make ends meet.

 

My only actual purchase was a Mr Fin Malcolm who looked like this at the start of the season

Screenshot_20210423-223619.thumb.png.84acdd321b70973f20a49a7e207a6aba.pngScreenshot_20210423-223623.thumb.png.c60969dcf6bbe81a65908088c14c71b2.png

 

Last season I'd managed to get us to the semi's of the Bet Fred and Scottish Cups, could I do one better this season?

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210428-145318.thumb.png.ef28b3feee50f761f91f785d85bcb854.pngScreenshot_20210427-224216.thumb.png.9bb18cb962ed55b8be99041064908565.png

Yes I could!

 

So that just left the league, honestly at the start of the season I'd have been happy with mid-table, preferably in the champions half in those final few games. But alas that was not to be...

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210428-145537.thumb.png.bfd44328af8b3881510e01d01487de8b.png

 

I don't quite know what happened...

Ranger ran away with the title, I even managed to beat them 3 times over the course of the season, once in the league and once in each of the cups.

 

So I started playing this season with the formation I was playing most of last season of two up front, as I had no idea what Shaw was going to be like, if he was going to improve and I didn't want to rely on Malcolm too heavily as he's still young and should be able to improve a fair bit. But towards the end of the season I changed to 1 up top and moved my IWBs back to FBs as I felt a bit too leaky at the back.

 

So at the end of the season here's Shaw's profile:

Screenshot_20210428-145555.thumb.png.8426f849ddc3030cfbe4b03fd3984224.png

A tiny bit of improvement, but he's peaked now I think. I do wonder what would have happened if he hadn't that message saying he had to play at a higher level to improve. I'm guessing he's improved in the background and so maxed out his PA.

And on to Fin Malcolm, he did improve a couple of times I'd still want his stats to get a bit higher especially aerial and technique as he's atrocious at penalties I don't think he's scored a single one and towards the end of the season he was wanting to be rested.

Screenshot_20210428-145542.thumb.png.e96cd9db6aae511ccc90203294e4fa81.png

 

And here's their history pages:

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210428-145558.thumb.png.7213af33c719a16f1148cb0c154e141a.png

Screenshot_20210428-145546.thumb.png.129d0878bf66dc622015306254237b65.png

Not too shabby for a first season in the top league!

I think if I can get some better wingers and midfielders in (I'd completely forgotten about loans until Jan when I brought in a young Man City CM and he bossed the midfield for the rest of the season). I had been trying to only use Scottish players, but quite frankly that's out of the window as they're just not good enough.

 

So on to next season, fingers crossed Celtic stay where they are and Rangers just had a blip of a season (but I doubt it somehow), it's going to be tough but I'm not bothered about the Cups anymore so I can rest Malcolm and Europe will be interesting, he should be able to improve a fair bit just playing in it.

 

My other players won, almost every award that was going too

Spoiler

Screenshot_20210428-145419.thumb.png.670a3acbb3b37c16f55912074326c8de.pngScreenshot_20210428-145412.thumb.png.c7837af728b0a603cdc95eee43d786f7.pngScreenshot_20210428-145404.thumb.png.2855f434ae7e06b21d593099ff30415c.pngScreenshot_20210428-145352.thumb.png.464faea43053688ba08b0339e2668e37.png

 

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