Career 3KC For Šeško? Let’s Go!! [Complete]

[Scratch]

Recently @Rob put out a call for people to chase the mythical 3KC. And, being a sucker for over the top goal scoring challenges, I fell hook line and sinker for it.

 

The Club

There was really only one choice for me and that was my old friend Celtic.

I briefly thought about trying this in China, but Celtic really is the perfect choice for this sort of thing. They have a relatively high budget for a weak league and can attract a good level of player due to their UCL place.

I’d also used Celtic several times recently and had a very good idea of the players I could bring in that would take us to the next level quickly.

 

The Player

In the end there was only one choice for the player as well: Benjamin Šeško.

There are a couple of downsides to Sesko:

• I couldn't make Slovenia playable in a test run, so there will be no ITN goals in this save, something I may come to regret later with such a high target.

• He is already 18 years old at the start of the save and it would be better to use someone younger, so we could squeeze an extra season or two out of them.

But he fits the mould I need perfectly. He is tall, good in the air, and has a very high potential. He also starts the game with some decent stats, so he can start scoring from day 1, which means he will get updates quickly as well.

I thought about using Leaburn or Jhon (Crazy Like The Wolf) Duran, but while they are the right shape for me, they just don't have the quality of Sesko.

Sesko will slot right into my tactics in the same way Satriano did when scoring 150 club goals in a season. The same way Scamacca, Lucca, Piccoli, Esposito, Pellegri have slotted into my tactics to great effect in recent seasons.

 

The Tactics

I’m using the Balanced variation of my TT Blaster tactic, but with this formation:

It's both battle tested and fit for purpose. And I'm working in some of the newer stuff I've learned - like moving another player forward if we're not getting chances against 3 at the back, so he doesn't have as many people marking him.

 

Transfers

A lot of business done, using every transfer trick I know (except for the 'set your own price' one):

Spoiler

It can be difficult selling players, so I used all the tricks:

• I straight up sold those players who attracted interest (Rogic, Welsh, Bolingoli, Mikey), using over top bargaining techniques similar to those written up by @Meow.

• I used the bait and switch ‘offer out for loan and then change to transfer’ technique for most of the rest that I received a transfer fee for.

• I used 10 players as make-weight exchanges when buying the players I wanted.

When buying players, I used the 50% sell on fee for almost all deals. I’ll get less money for them later obviously, but it means I could bring in players for 66% of what they would have cost otherwise, resulting in a much stronger season 1 team.

Some highlights:

• I bought Sesko for £5M plus Giakoumakis.

• After Sesko, my main concern was getting good wingers. My go-to LW Sergio Gomez rejected me, so I fell back to Lainez, who I got for a straight up exchange with Abada.

• Nygren is always worth buying, good potential, lots of development and quite versatile - I normally play him in the centre, but given we were struggling to find a second LW, I went with him there and he's looking good (around 15 Crossing).

• On the right, we brought in Pavon, who will be good for a couple of seasons.

• For our second RW, I started the season with Carreira, who I often buy (high PA, £1.6M release clause), but his Crossing didn’t improve much (stuck around 12), so I went and spent £13M on Chem Campbell in January (who was up to 15 Crossing by the end of the season).

• I always want a decent backup striker and Scamacca was the choice here, in large part because he only cost £3M once I included Furuhashi and the 50% sell on clause. I struggled to get him to agree to a contract, but just squeezed it through.

• Then I wanted a good mentor for Sesko. I couldn’t get Giroud, so I went for Quagliarella and he was great (more on that later).

• When you’re playing 1 at the back, you need a decent goalie, so I turned to my old friend Livakovic, who only cost £1M (plus Greg Taylor).

• You need good DCs as well, so Zabarnyi came in (will be top class), along with McKenna (too slow, but good otherwise and don’t have enough money for anyone better right now).

• For DR/WBR, well, if you don’t buy Rosas with his £1.6M release clause on day one, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

I could go on, but I’m sure you’re bored already.

 

Results

A pretty good start:

Domestically we cruised the league, averaging about 3.4 goals per game (looking for 4 next year), while only conceding 23 goals (why would you ever play more than one at the back?) and we also won the cups.

Spoiler

In Europe it was another story. We made it to the UCL path playoff, beating PSV on the way, only to blow out against Sparta Prague, losing 6-2 in the second leg, with their winner scored in the 92nd minute (I guess that's why you might sometimes play with more than one at the back).

That put us into the Euro Cup and we came third in the group, meaning we dropped down further into the Euro 2 Cup. I thought we might actually have a chance at winning that, but we ran into Roma in the quarter finals and they sent us packing.

Spoiler

 

Injuries

No injuries this year! Well, he did come off injured in one game, but there was no message afterwards, and he only missed one game getting back to 100% condition.

I did have him on low intensity training all season and will continue this, as in my experience it significantly lessens (but not removes) the chance of him getting injured.

 

Development

A massive year of development for Sesko, with lots of goals, leading to lots of updates. He ended the season looking like this:

Not bad and more of development to come yet.

 

Mentoring

As mentioned above, I bought Quagliarella in to mentor Sesko.

A lot of people mention Carrillo and he is indeed my choice when I’m trying to improve Aerial. However, Sesko starts with 15 Aerial and has a lot of development up his sleeve, so I’m confident he will get to 19 or 20 Aerial without mentoring. That leaves me free to get him a mentor that will improve his hidden attributes. Enter Quagliarella…

He has a high value for both Professionalism and Hard Work, which are the ones I'm most concerned about. And he's a good influence on youngsters, meaning he is likely to pass on the full value of one of his hidden attributes. And so it was to be.

I use a technique I've dubbed "double dipping": basically, I start the mentoring but cancel it before it reaches halfway (normally after 35% or so, but don't cancel it too soon). At that point, the mentor may pass on one of his hidden attributes (many don't but those like Giroud and Quagliarealla almost always do).

Then you restart the mentoring and keep going to the same point and cancel it again. At that point the player may get another full hidden attribute from the player. This doesn't happen every time - it seems to be every second time - so I normally assign another player to the mentor and then cancel that first, then cancel the one I actually care about second.

This worked for Sesko, with Quagliarella first passing on his Determination value (would have preferred Professionalism or Work Rate, but Determination isn't bad), then passing on his Professionalism value at the second step. I missed the first screenshot, but here's the second:

Not content with that, I'm now trying to triple dip! Although the game warned me that Sesko was unlikely to benefit from further mentoring, I paired them again and at the end on the season, it's progressing nicely:

Note: Unlike last year, FMM22 uses some of a player's potential for mentoring. It's only a point or two, but if you mentor a player too often, it will slightly reduce the number of updates the player will get. Sesko has development points to spare, but not all players will, so triple dipping is probably a little excessive (and often doesn't work).

 

Fining And Praising

As well as mentoring, I also fined Sesko when he played poorly (rating of 5 or less) and so far he has responded well:

I also go through the entire team once a month (any more often and they complain) and praise everyone with an average rating higher than 7.0 over the last 5 games. About 30% of my team get a Work Rate increase each time. Unfortunately Sesko is not in that group and he doesn't get a Work Rate update, but it has increased enough through fining that he's now seen as hard working.

In fact, we've turned Sesko from player with decent hidden attributes into a consummate professional, with steely determination.

Tell him to jump and he asks how high then goes and does it. "3K? No worries gaffer, you can count on me". And you know what? I believe him.

 

Goals

Let's get down to it. Did all this development and self improvement and squad building and club success lead to goals for our lad? You bet it did!

His biggest individual game was 7 goals against St Johnstone in an SPL game:

He ended up scoring an even 100 goals from 56 games, a massive start for an 18 year old:

That's my biggest first season ever! Though let's face it, it's probably necessary given we're going for 3K goals...

 

Target

Season	Goals
01	100
Total	100/3000

100 goals down, only 2,900 to get!

 

Final Thoughts

3KC is a massive target and I honestly don’t think I’m going to make it - but I couldn’t ask for a better start.

Sesko will continue to improve and the squad around him will continue to level up, meaning he should be close to 150 goals per season in the next couple of years. But for next year, 120 goals will do.

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Scratch

[broodje kip]

100 already? Wtf mate 😂

[Rob]

100 at the age of 18. Nuts. Brilliant going and great write up.

Oh, and you slipped the Duran Duran joke in which makes it extra, extra special.

[Titjes]

Fantastic start @Scratch, good luck 😉

[Dai_]

What a great write up!!

I told you you'd hit the ton! I have more faith than you have in yourself. Ha! Its incredible! Insane mate! 

It fascinates me the way you go about things. Keep it up!

Edited June 30, 2022 by Dai_

[Scratch]

33 minutes ago, broodje kip said:

100 already? Wtf mate 😂

Thanks mate! Good luck on yours too.

24 minutes ago, Rob said:

100 at the age of 18. Nuts. Brilliant going and great write up.

Oh, and you slipped the Duran Duran joke in which makes it extra, extra special.

Thanks mate. I try to slip it in whenever I can...

9 minutes ago, Titjes said:

Fantastic start @Scratch, good luck 😉

Thanks! Gonna need it. 

6 minutes ago, Dai_ said:

I told you you'd hit the ton! I have more faith than you have in yourself. Ha! Its incredible! Insane mate! 

It fascinates me the way you go about things. Keep it up!

Thanks. I figured there'd be a second half drop off, but it was balanced out by the squad levelling up every game!

[StuartM]

Just wow... and great insights too!

[Scratch]

12 minutes ago, StuartM said:

Just wow... and great insights too!

Thanks mate, I have lots of little tricks (will need all of them for this!) and like to share them as I go. 😄

[Superking]

1 hour ago, Scratch said:

Thanks mate, I have lots of little tricks (will need all of them for this!) and like to share them as I go. 😄

I also don't know about trasfer trick how to sign a player who haven't granted work permits at 1st attempt 

I gave up so many times after 2 attempts 

And ur monitoring tips I  will use it in next challenge .. 

And Can other country Nationality Manager Manage England? Or I need to be start with England nationality to manage England in world Cups and Euro cups 

[Scratch]

3 minutes ago, Superking said:

I also don't know about trasfer trick how to sign a player who haven't granted work permits at 1st attempt 

I gave up so many times after 2 attempts 

And ur monitoring tips I  will use it in next challenge .. 

And Can other country Nationality Manager Manage England? Or I need to be start with England nationality to manage England in world Cups and Euro cups 

For work permits, you can appeal. For some players that will never work as they are not good enough. For other it will work - sometimes not the first time, you might have to try to buy them 4 or 5 times in some cases before the appeal works. 

As it happens, I didn't need to appeal once for the players I bought here. After playing a lot you get to know which players will get a work permit - although I use the same players again and again which is pretty boring!

Any nationality can manage England. There might be a slight boost for someone with England as the nationality, but I never noticed it. But you do need to win a fair bit before they will appoint you. Even if you are a superstar manager in the game, unless you win stuff in the save, they will mostly ignore you.

[Superking]

1 minute ago, Scratch said:

For work permits, you can appeal. For some players that will never work as they are not good enough. For other it will work - sometimes not the first time, you might have to try to buy them 4 or 5 times in some cases before the appeal works. 

As it happens, I didn't need to appeal once for the players I bought here. After playing a lot you get to know which players will get a work permit - although I use the same players again and again which is pretty boring!

Any nationality can manage England. There might be a slight boost for someone with England as the nationality, but I never noticed it. But you do need to win a fair bit before they will appoint you. Even if you are a superstar manager in the game, unless you win stuff in the save, they will mostly ignore you.

Players with international experience doesn't required work permits I thought 🤔  and players with High price tag also ...

So I can manage England after winning UEFA Champions League 🏆 one or two times .. 

Thanks for help I wasn't sure about national team management because I haven't played more than 3 season and not applied for national teams till now ..

But for 1 kc challenge I need to know although 1kc can achieve without National goals count 🤔. 

[Scratch]

9 minutes ago, Superking said:

Players with international experience doesn't required work permits I thought 🤔  and players with High price tag also ...

So I can manage England after winning UEFA Champions League 🏆 one or two times .. 

Thanks for help I wasn't sure about national team management because I haven't played more than 3 season and not applied for national teams till now ..

But for 1 kc challenge I need to know although 1kc can achieve without National goals count 🤔. 

They still need a work permit depending which country you are playing in and which country they are from - but if they have a lot a caps or are a very promising youngster, they normally get it without a problem.

You probably don't even need to win the UCL twice to get the England job, though should make it certain. But you probably need to win something...

For a 1KC (or 3KC), international goals count but only when you are manager (so you need to get screenshots showing the value etc). But you can do a 1KC without ITN goals. Whether you can do a 3KC without them is a good question - we'll find out I guess!

Edited June 30, 2022 by Scratch

[Meow]

1 hour ago, Scratch said:

using every transfer trick I know (except for the 'set your own price' one)

....

I used the bait and switch ‘offer out for loan and then change to transfer’ technique for most of the rest that I received a transfer fee for

If that's the play, then affiliates might be helpful. They are a good avenue for the "loan offer then transfer" trick, as they are tend to make a loan offer for every not-so-good squad player type person.

 

2 hours ago, Scratch said:

I straight up sold those players who attracted interest (Rogic, Welsh, Bolingoli, Mikey), using over top bargaining techniques similar to those written up by @Meow.

Cheers mate! Chatting with you about FMM always leads to more information being discovered.

Does not even have to be something completely new, sometimes it's just corroborating that our experience is the same or putting bits together to understand the full story.

 

3 hours ago, Scratch said:

100 goals down, only 2,900 to get!

Theoretically possible 3kc, but hope luck blows your way on this challenge.

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, Meow said:

If that's the play, then affiliates might be helpful. They are a good avenue for the "loan offer then transfer" trick, as they are tend to make a loan offer for every not-so-good squad player type person.

 

Cheers mate! Chatting with you about FMM always leads to more information being discovered.

Does not even have to be something completely new, sometimes it's just corroborating that our experience is the same or putting bits together to understand the full story.

 

Theoretically possible 3kc, but hope luck blows your way on this challenge.

Thanks mate! Have learned a lot from our discussions as well. So so much in fact! For eg, I never even thought of beefing up on affiliates to help with the bait and switch! 😄

[Superking]

4 minutes ago, Scratch said:

They still need a work permit depending which country you are playing in and which country they are from - but if they have a lot a caps or are a very promising youngster, they normally get it without a problem.

You probably don't even need to win the UCL twice to get the England job, though should make it certain. But you probably need to win something...

For a 1KC (or 3KC), international goals count but only when you are manager (so you need to get screenshots showing the value etc). But you can do a 1KC without ITN goals. Whether you can do a 3KC without them is a good question - we'll find out I guess!

🤣🤣 let me try 1KC my main stiker only scored 47 out of 129 team goals in leagues and highest 50 goals  in 3 season and Stiker is LUKAKU so if I can get 70 out of 129 than I will try 3KC for sure

 

[Meow]

14 minutes ago, Scratch said:

Thanks mate! Have learned a lot from our discussions as well. So so much in fact! For eg, I never even thought of beefing up on affiliates to help with the bait and switch! 😄

I JUST learnt this actually. I'm trying to get Oxford and Bath promoted in my Salisbury save, pumping them full of talent for my own entertainment

Found out you get very consistent offers from your affiliates. Remember to just offer normal loans, not the direct send to affiliate one.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Meow

[broodje kip]

3 hours ago, Scratch said:

Mikey

You have sinned.

[Scratch]

55 minutes ago, broodje kip said:

You have sinned.

First player I tried to sell, mainly because I knew you would read this!  

Nah, I used to be a big Mikey fan too, but he's a shadow of his former self now...

[broodje kip]

Just now, Scratch said:

First player I tried to sell, mainly because I knew you would read this!  

Nah, I used to be a big Mikey fan too, but he's a shadow of his former self now...

Too bad, I can’t disagree with you. Injury did him dirty.

[Scratch]

1 minute ago, broodje kip said:

Too bad, I can’t disagree with you. Injury did him dirty.

Yeah. But also that is the way with the FM/FMM... Many of the wonderkids never quite live up to their early FM promise... 🙁

[Rob]

@Scratch what’s the run rate you see hoping for during the next five seasons?

[Scratch]

21 minutes ago, Rob said:

@Scratch what’s the run rate you see hoping for during the next five seasons?

I worked out that if I can get 22 years out of him (ending with him just about to turn 40), then I need 136 goals per season.

Obviously he will be limping near the end and well below that, and I would like to finish it quicker than that (if it's possible), so I'm hoping to get him to 120 goals next year, then 150 after that for 10 seasons or so, then keep it as high as possible after that.

[Rob]

36 minutes ago, Scratch said:

I worked out that if I can get 22 years out of him (ending with him just about to turn 40), then I need 136 goals per season.

Obviously he will be limping near the end and well below that, and I would like to finish it quicker than that (if it's possible), so I'm hoping to get him to 120 goals next year, then 150 after that for 10 seasons or so, then keep it as high as possible after that.

When you say it like that it does seem eminently possible. 

[broodje kip]

6 minutes ago, Rob said:

When you say it like that it does seem eminently possible. 

I mean it’s Scratch

[Rob]

27 minutes ago, broodje kip said:

I mean it’s Scratch

I have high hopes for this one.

[Superking]

This solo striker tactics requires best squad. This tactics doesn't work with 

Mid table teams with average players I tried everything but still not getting results I liked 

In fact concedes more goals than usual 

And less goals scored than usual 

With 2 strikers I scored plenty with Chelsea without signing any players ..

I signed players with team work 

Teq attributes 15+ but still doesn't work 😕   

So I gave up on solo stiker tactics 

 

 

[FuddledFox]

An incredible start and an interesting write up. The lack of ITN could prove a problem in the long run for those nice bonus goals it offers but at this stage you couldn’t ask for any more.

Good luck.

[Scratch]

Mini Update

Tripple Dipped!! Would have preferred Loyalty or Work Rate given he's already pretty consistent, but hey, I'll take that.

[Scratch]

7 hours ago, Superking said:

This solo striker tactics requires best squad. This tactics doesn't work with 

Mid table teams with average players I tried everything but still not getting results I liked 

In fact concedes more goals than usual 

And less goals scored than usual 

With 2 strikers I scored plenty with Chelsea without signing any players ..

I signed players with team work 

Teq attributes 15+ but still doesn't work 😕   

So I gave up on solo stiker tactics 

Like I say on the TT Blaster page:

That's for the 3 up front variation - with the 1 up front version I'm using here you probably won't get thumped 6-0, but you are not going to see great results unless you have a significantly stronger team than your opponents.

Also, there is a reason I am using Celtic for this. This is the man banging in the goals:

This is one of the men putting the ball on his head in the box:

And this is what the other Scottish teams are sending out to try to stop him:

It's no contest! Creating a mismatch like that in the EPL is gonna be difficult, even with a top team.

Even in the SPL, I couldn't do this with the standard Celtic team. I got rid of most of them as soon as I could and replaced them with players I know will develop a lot, and who will end up a lot better. For example, this dude is coming off the bench for us now and is better than any of the starting players we had when I arrived:

On top of that I'm using all the little tricks to make sure our squad is firing on all cylinders. All the Dynamic settings are A (except the last one). I praise all the players who are doing well once a month (and a third of them get a Work Rate upgrade as a result). Etc.

Oh and I'm getting a goal or two every game just from corners. If you have a corner taker with high Crossing and a striker with high Aerial and you try to isolate the striker with only a defender or two on him, then he's gonna score a lot from corners.

Anyway, hope you do try again sometime - but it's not as simple as finding the right tactic and BAM it works. There's a lot more that goes into it..

[Scratch]

10 hours ago, Rob said:

I have high hopes for this one.

I don't know. It's not going so well. He started off with 4 and 5 goals, but can't get above 3 now...

Even had a 2 in the game after that. 🙁