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Career Geordie's UK Goal Challenge - Complete


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I hadn't forgotten about this career! You'd forgotten about this career!

 

Anyway... so I'd been struggling to actually play this career, I just couldn't find any joy in after a game or two so it was slow going after I finished my twelfth season of TTR. But I pushed through after failing to get a good start in the Mbappe & Haaland badge... and got to the end of our second season in the Scottish Premiership.

I had a bit of a tweak of tactics just after Christmas as it just wasn't working and Malcolm wasn't scoring enough for my liking.

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I moved my wingers back to the halfway line as I felt they were stealing a few too many goals from my striker and moved my IWBs back to the back line and just made them WBs, they were letting too many people sneak past them and whip crosses in. I also changed from "Shoot on Sight" to "Work into the Box". I can't tell if it's made a difference yet as I've had a fair few injuries to my preferred starting line up, and my wingers took a while to get used to playing a bit further back (the auto pick kept on wanting to play my "best" right back as my right winger). Plus my wingers don't have the best crossing in the world so that's somewhere I can improve.

 

But this is how the league table was at the end of the season:

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I won the Scottish Cup again too;

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It was a bit of mess of game to be honest... and I've never had a keeper score a 3 and still win the game before:

Spoiler

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We also somehow managed to squeak out a win against Man Utd in the Euro Cup final, with a couple of headers from corners from one of my CDs.

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So a successful season for the club all in all!

 

But I regret to say that Malcolm just wasn't having the best of seasons, he managed to stay pretty much injury free, I think 1 10 day injury towards the end of the season, but that was it.

But he just couldn't quite get the just over goal a game that's needed to get the required 52 goals in 38 games.

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It's still showing that he still has a little bit of room for improvement, but I doubt he's going to get much better, which is a shame as I wish his technique was better as he rarely scores penalties! But I might try and sign someone who has the can take a good penalty trait and get him to mentor him, preferably someone who's got good aerial too!

 

Shaw did ok coming on as a sub most games when Malcolm had gotten a couple of goals or was looking tired, plus he played most of the cup and European games so Malcolm was not too tired for the league.

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So fingers crossed I can get some good players in this summer and get Malcolm to push on to get those extra dozen or so goals in the league. Maybe playing him in Europe a bit more to get that extra bit of higher level experience too.

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So this happened... Shame it was a stage too early... I seem to remember this happening last time and then when I needed the Premier League jobs they dried up because I'd gone to Northern Ireland and my reputation plummeted.

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2 hours ago, geordiekrispy said:

So this happened... Shame it was a stage too early... I seem to remember this happening last time and then when I needed the Premier League jobs they dried up because I'd gone to Northern Ireland and my reputation plummeted.

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I would stay away if a 70 year old de gea is still their star player

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So Season 6 is now wrapped up and after a bit of a lull due to *cough* forgetting about it *cough* I felt that the change in tactics and some good transfers helped push the club to some heights it never would have dreamed of in real life!

Let's start with the transfers I brought it, I wasn't given a massive transfer kitty, but I was able to boost it with the sale of probably my best defender who I'd picked up for a free last season, with some youngsters and some older heads coming in.

Spoiler

In:
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Out:

Screenshot_20210526-113423.thumb.png.9bf7546bb663a8e4bc0f678c8f9b534f.pngScreenshot_20210526-113427.thumb.png.18b4327173a57403bfb6ad3e16358dd7.png

 

 

In terms of trophies we started off the season well with a win in the Euro Super Cup as mentioned earlier:

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In terms of the Cups, we got knocked out of the Bet Fred quarter finals, but managed to get old of the Scottish Cup.

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On to the league, we won that fairly comfortably with Rangers being a constant threat and Celtic being the weaker of the Old Firm.

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And here's my manger history screen

Spoiler

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So how did our man Fin Malcolm do this season?

Pretty well to be honest, the change in tactics has definitely helped, he's been an ever present on the scoresheet. I can only think of a couple of games where he didn't score.

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In terms of achievements he won pretty much, if not all of them

Spoiler

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I also thought it was worth showing you some of his supporting team members, I've somehow managed to snag a fair few wonderkids and I've been trying to break them in gently and using them as impact subs for the older players in the squad when they tire around the 65-70 minute mark.

Spoiler

Shaw was pretty much only used for cup games, Europe and for when Malcolm had scored at least 2 in the league games as was getting tired.

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Fotheringham has come on in leaps and bounds after being picked up a few seasons ago, being played as AMC rather than a right winger but he's played there when needed.

McGuirk, Pitana & Suarez have become our first choice LB, MR and GK after a couple of seasons of being backups.

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Silva is still not a first choice MC as I'm not sure he's actually the best in that position, he seems to be burdened by his ability to play in so many positions, just not amazingly.

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Of the new guys here's the wonderkids and best of the bunch:

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After trying to get the facilities upgraded and being rejected even though we had 20m + in the kitty, this made it a reality:

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So after that successful season in nearly every way. I need to keep an eye out for jobs in the Danske Bank Premiership.

There was a job available at Portadown, after they'd secured the Championship title and promotion, but I somehow didn't get the job... Also the job at Glenavon kept on coming up even though they won the Bet McLean League Cup and got through to the final of the Northern Irish Cup losing to Ballymena Utd who had been relegated, but they only managed to finish 8th in the league.

It will be interesting to see how much my reputation takes a hit as fingers crossed I can knock the NI leg out in one season and get to a Premership Club who can afford some English wonderkids :P

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So season 5 is over and season 6 begins, with the eyes on a new country, club and player!

After the weird scenarios last season of applying for jobs at clubs I thought it might be because they couldn't afford to pay off my contract given at a Scottish Premiership club. So I though it best to make it a bit easier for them (after winning the two coach of the year awards obviously)...

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As it was the World Cup there was a flurry of international jobs made available and I did get offered the Argentina job, which was tempting, but unlikely to help me and probably get in the way.

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So I had to play the waiting game for a Danske Bank Premier job to become available...

And it did, after the first game of the season of all times?

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Dungannon had just been knocked out of both sets of European qualifiers and then drew their first league game 0-0.

 

So I was officially in Northern Ireland.

 

So I had to do some quick work in the transfer market to get rid of deadwood and get in some better quality players (I can't see them staying long as most of them say that they need to play at a higher level to improve).

But I started with the most important one, my chosen future record breaker!

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It's getting to that point in the save where I have to check that the player was real and not a regen. He is at Cliftonville at the start of the game, but it's his first season.

And a bit of google sleuthing led me to believe that he is a Cliftonville Olympics player, which I think is the youth team.

And if someone decides that he's not real, I also had this striker available at the club already, who all I think is real too...

Spoiler

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So I've got a record of 55 goals in the league (in 37 games as I only joined after the first one), which is just under 1.5 goals per game. Fingers crossed the lower quality level will mean it's possible!

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So season 7 turned out to be short and sweet!

After trying to clear out the deadwood as much as I could and trying to keep the wages under budget this is who I transfers in and out over the season:

Spoiler

Out:

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In:

Screenshot_20210530-075503.thumb.png.b712fa5624f8d2af8ff8096c1f92e466.pngScreenshot_20210530-075513.thumb.png.24947f7ae83b527c453b82f068272feb.pngScreenshot_20210530-075517.thumb.png.a227181cbb549895569d7428ffe88500.png

 

Trophy wise I was able to get a clean sweep of everything I playing in;

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Spoiler

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I have to say that there are a stupid amount of cups available in Northern Ireland! So I was constantly having to rotate my squad, and I've never won the league before the January transfer window had closed!

 

In terms of goals, Carey was quite frankly running riot! But he still kept me waiting to the end of the season to complete this leg of the challenge, needing 2 goals from the last 2 games, he then scored a brace in the penultimate game and one more in the final league game of the season.
Here's how he ended the domestic season:

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Now the eagle eyed among you may notice that the dates on these screenshots are a little bit early... Mainly due to the fact that once I noticed that I only needed 15 goals form the last 10 games I started looking at job and noticed that there were a few Premier League job very insecure, but most of them were for clubs already relegated or flirting with the drop zone. But that included a certain Mr Gerrard who was managing Arsenal who were having a horrible season sitting 16th.

Needless to say I declared my interest as soon as Carey had done his business, and they proceeded to sack poor Stephen with 3 games left!

I applied thinking if I didn't someone else would swoop in at the end of the season.

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So I dutifully took the job and had the final 2 games of the Premier League season to work out what had happened and who was to blame :)

Edited by geordiekrispy
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So it turns out the Arsenal haven't been having the best of times since the start of the game, having won nothing and getting to the final of the Carabao Cup in the 2024/25 season.

 Screenshot_20210530-233230.thumb.png.b7f6710e082badfe7418994caf9ffbe2.png

 

So it seemed to be up to me to (re)build a squad that was capable of doing something, but they seemed to have the bare bones of a decent enough squad, just massively overstocked in the AMRLC department...

Spoiler

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After a pretty quiet summer of trying to get some full backs as Arsenal seemed to have 1 full back on either side.

And although they said I'd get 83m, I only got ~25m, so I decided to stick with a striker who was already at the club and scored 3 goals in the last 2 games for me last season.

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I know he's on the wonderkid list with a 3* rating. If I can get his aerial up a bit and his positioning he should be good, he's got bags of pace and his finishing it good too.

So we'll see how he goes, if he doesn't seem to be pulling his weight by the January transfer window I can always try and get Delap in as he's still at Man City, as he's who I had in mind for the challenge as I think he's definitely capable of it.

 

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Just now, Rob said:

Would be great to see you do it with TJJ. Best of luck. 

I'm only a few months in and he seems to be decent, we'll have to see if he is consistent and/or injury prone...

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I love seeing the AI squad planning skills. Almost as bad as Woodward!

I also love seeing someone else playing in Northern Ireland and grabbing 6 trophies a season. How many matches did you play? 70? What an awesome league!

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25 minutes ago, hhooo said:

I love seeing the AI squad planning skills. Almost as bad as Woodward!

I also love seeing someone else playing in Northern Ireland and grabbing 6 trophies a season. How many matches did you play? 70? What an awesome league!

38 league games + 21 cup games so 59.

If they'd got past the first round of qualifers for either the champions league or euro 2 cup it would have been even more!

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Another quick season for me, the Arsenal squad was pretty decent other than them paying players stupid money, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

Competition wise we won the League Cup

Spoiler

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We were top of the league for pretty much all of the season due to John-Jules living up to his former wonderkid status.

In the end we wont he league with a game in hand, with Liverpool pushing us all the way.

Spoiler

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We unfortunately lost the FA Cup on penalties though:

Spoiler

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So how did our main man, the former wonderkid and Arsenal academy graduate Tyreece John-Jules (he is the nephew of Danny John-Jules so his cat like agility is a given)

This is how he ended the season attributes wise:

Screenshot_20210603-122438.thumb.png.73ba9ca9cf51e6e1946fc34a4fcaab0d.png

His Aerial still isn't fantastic but definitely good enough, most of his goal shave come from his amazing pace though...

Talking about goals, he managed a fantastic return of 64 league goals!

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So that means the challenge is completed with a very quick last few seasons.

 

My manager profile looked like this at the end:

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I tried to keep my signings to being UK based rather than worldwide, but it was hard to find good players in the country I was in most of the time.

 

It was interesting to see my overall best XI though, lost of Arsenal players but a fair few Airdrie players in there too with a lone Dungannon player sneaking in on the right wing.

Screenshot_20210603-122515.thumb.png.6e11bd48797d9b2a4835c80a382feb21.png

 

In terms of the trophy cabinet, the only trophies I didn't win were the Champions League and the FA Cup.
I think this Arsenal side could give the Champions League a good try with a few more additions/swaps and we gave the FA Cup a good try this year.

Spoiler

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So on to pastures new... I have no idea what though, I'm tempted to re-start my Napoli Maradonna career again, but I'll see if anything catches my eye.

 

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That was quick! Nice work. I have to admit I've never found a system to really take advantage of a really fast striker, with every ai team playing on defensive all match. I'd be curious to see how you do it! 

Something I'm pondering for a future save is playing every player out of position (red) and bringing up a lower league team. 

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16 minutes ago, hhooo said:

That was quick! Nice work. I have to admit I've never found a system to really take advantage of a really fast striker, with every ai team playing on defensive all match. I'd be curious to see how you do it! 

Something I'm pondering for a future save is playing every player out of position (red) and bringing up a lower league team. 

There definitely times when he was able to pounce on a "stray" backpass from the defender to the GK.

It was very similar when I was at Airdrie actually, both Shaw and Malcom were very quick. If I'd been able to get TJJ's aerial up he'd have been lethal at corners too! Saying that Shaw scored a lot of corners, but I think he essentially bundled them in or let them drop and volley it home rather than head it.

I didn't even have try through balls on, maybe he would have scored even more if I had... Arsenal didn't have the best wingers, not great crossing but good passing and dribbling so I think he was able to get a lot of good passes to then run with it.

 

As much as I know (through everyone else's massively scoring careers) good aerial is key to scoring lots, I really do think that having a fast striker is my favourite type rather than a big lump to aim for up front.

Thinking about it, my two strikers at Lyon in TTR were both really fast

I've seen a lot of goals scored from the opposition having a corner and it being headed out to my striker and him just legging it up field and having a 1-on-1 with the keeper.

 

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1 hour ago, geordiekrispy said:

There definitely times when he was able to pounce on a "stray" backpass from the defender to the GK.

It was very similar when I was at Airdrie actually, both Shaw and Malcom were very quick. If I'd been able to get TJJ's aerial up he'd have been lethal at corners too! Saying that Shaw scored a lot of corners, but I think he essentially bundled them in or let them drop and volley it home rather than head it.

I didn't even have try through balls on, maybe he would have scored even more if I had... Arsenal didn't have the best wingers, not great crossing but good passing and dribbling so I think he was able to get a lot of good passes to then run with it.

 

As much as I know (through everyone else's massively scoring careers) good aerial is key to scoring lots, I really do think that having a fast striker is my favourite type rather than a big lump to aim for up front.

Thinking about it, my two strikers at Lyon in TTR were both really fast

I've seen a lot of goals scored from the opposition having a corner and it being headed out to my striker and him just legging it up field and having a 1-on-1 with the keeper.

 

Yeah, aerial spam is definitely the most reliable way to put in huge numbers, but my club legend is like 6 points away from 80/80 for physical stats, so I figured I would see if there's anything I'm missing. 

I've also managed some excellent numbers from passing combinations in tight spaces on the edge of the box, but the fast guy onto through balls tactic has never worked well for me. 

Which league was your favorite? 

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4 hours ago, hhooo said:

Which league was your favorite? 

Honestly I'm not sure they all were quite different.

Wales was squad building on essentially nothing and then just smashing as many goals in as I could.

Scotland was a bit of squad building and then European games so a bit tougher opposition.

N.Ireland was just an insane amount of games so squad rotation and squad management.

England seemed the easiest but that's because I was able to fall into a squad that was good, just AI managed so missing a few key positions and good tactics.

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21 minutes ago, Rich said:

Well done mate, you smashed that, nicely done 😁

Thanks, that challenge has been a monkey on my back for 2 years!

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