Career Armstrong shooting for 1000 goals

[danovic78]

Another solid season but like the lads have said, just need to squeeze some more goals from him.

[Scratch]

19 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Nice handling on the GK situation and I had similar issues re ITN games/goals in my career. I have the feeling it needs some tweaking in that regard. Still a good season despite the set backs. Keep going!!

Thanks - although with the GK situation, it was probably a silly move to get rid of Horn in the first place. He was very good quality and he was getting the job done. From reading your 1K career, I sort of think you probably would have stuck with him and not meddled with something that was working well. Unfortunately, I'm destined to constantly tinker!

Anyway, I'll push to the end on this career.

Edited January 11, 2017 by scratch99

[Scratch]

18 hours ago, Ashez said:

The detail is outstanding, you don't get enough credit for it so thought I'd mention it  

Shame the goals are down but I'm keeping the faith! 

Hehe, thanks, I really appreciate that. It takes a while to put these updates together, but I quite enjoy it!

2 hours ago, danovic78 said:

Another solid season but like the lads have said, just need to squeeze some more goals from him.

Yep, I'll squeeze him a much as I can, but not sure there's enough in him..

[HalaDMV]

Great challenge mate. Question, Jay Tanner is a regen of who? Lampard? Gerrard?

[PriZe]

What a season, great comeback after his injury, and like Ashez said, nice write up m8! KIU

[Jack]

13 hours ago, HalaDMV said:

Great challenge mate. Question, Jay Tanner is a regen of who? Lampard? Gerrard?

That's Gerrard's regen. 

Keep going mate, I'm keeping the faith he can definitely produce at his peak for at least 3 more seasons...3 big seasons should get you over the line!

Edited January 13, 2017 by Jack

[Scratch]

On 13/01/2017 at 09:35, PriZe said:

What a season, great comeback after his injury, and like Ashez said, nice write up m8! KIU

Thanks mate, keeping it up as best we can!

[Scratch]

On 13/01/2017 at 16:33, Jack said:

That's Gerrard's regen. 

Keep going mate, I'm keeping the faith he can definitely produce at his peak for at least 3 more seasons...3 big seasons should get you over the line!

@HalaDMV @Jack Yeah, I'd have probably guess it was Gerrard's regen, but I have no idea how to find out for sure. Is it just a matter of looking at his stats at working out who it most resembles?

And thanks for the support!

[Scratch]

Season 11 Update 

 

Season 10 was blighted by injury. How will Armstrong bounce back in Season 11? Will he be able to stay healthy? And if so, will he be able to capture his 80 goal per season form? All will be revealed shortly!

 

Preseason

 

First though, Australia sacked Ange Postecoglou during the preseason:

 

I would have thought that being the most successful Australian coach in the world would have meant the press would be touting me for the position, but no...

 

I toyed with the idea of applying anyway - it would be a distraction from the 1KC, but it was a tempting thought. Luckily the game decided to keep me on track and didn't put an Apply Now button there for me to click. More than a year later, Australia still have no manager, so I guess it's a bug?

 

Transfers

 

I've found that most players seem to go off once they hit the 30 mark, with exceptions being few and far between. With a bunch of exciting young players all demanding some playing time, I sat down in the preseason and had a good hard look at our squad, knowing that some hard decisions had to be made.

 

The first of those was Fernando Rivas, who had been a great player for us, and part of the first wave of truly world class players at the club. He'd hit 30 and both his attributes and performances had dropped. With several better options in front of him, and some promising youngsters behind him, it was time to say goodbye. We sold him to Newcastle for £6.75M, well short of the £30M bid we turned down a couple of years earlier, but happy that he was going to a good home. 

 

Next was Sergi Samper, who had been a linchpin of the team, and arguably our first really big signing. Although he was 31, his attributes hadn't dropped, but his performances had that downward curve, with lower ratings and less assists each year. We could have kept him, but he wasn't first choice anymore. He commanded a great fee for a 31 year old: £29M to Manchester City. 

 

Players were a little upset about us selling Samper, but we quietened them down by purchasing Francesco Carlini from Real Madrid for £100M:

Carlini was a replacement for Samper who we'd been eyeing for a while. He was already 27, a little old for such a big spend, but he was slightly better than Samper and 4 years younger. 

 

Some other notable deals:

 

Philipe Vitorino da Silva, one of our free agent signings in preseason, later sold to Sporting for £52M after an auction. Making sugar!

 

 

Mid season we made the hard decision to sell Oleg Mamaev. 

We had bought him cheaply as a youngster and developed him right through into being a world class player. I'd made him our starting right winger, but unfortunately he was injury prone. After 5 months out, his third injury of the year, we cut our losses and sold him to Southampton for £15.75M.

 

One of my main three centre backs had to go after he got upset about playing time and triggered a lot of hate by other players... We have enough players to cover him leaving, so no problems, but it's just a little annoying. Players! 

 

After promoting keeper David Weir from the youth team, I started getting messages from the board that the fans regarded signing him as a poor piece of business.

 

Right.... I'll stick to buying foreigners then, shall I?

 

Notable Matches

 

Here are just a few of the most notable matches from this season.

 

First, we have a 6-0 drubbing of St Mirren, with Armstrong picking up 5 goals (and 1 disallowed). His best effort this season:

 

Next, we have an 8-0 annihilation of Dumbarton, with hat-tricks to both Armstrong and Mauro Ferrer (one of our promising youngsters):

 

Then Morton was beaten 6-1, with Armstrong getting 5 of the goals:

 

Injuries

 

Armstrong avoided serious injury this year, although he picked up a few knocks here and there and gave me a scare late in the season:

 

His condition dropped down to 45% and he had to miss the Scottish Cup Final, but he wasn't actually out injured and came back for the Champions League Final (just as well, read more about that below).

 

Goals

 

I had a bit of a screenshot fail this season, as I missed a lot of the games in the Form screen. Here's what I have of the first half of the season:

 

And here's what I have of the second half:

 

It was a good season, with quite a few games with braces, hat-tricks and even five goals a couple of times. However, there were also quite a few goalless games. He ended up with 69 goals in 55 games, which I would have been happy with, except for the fact that it fell short of the great 81 goal season. Maybe that was his peak? 

 

Anyway, that takes him to 629 goals for Celtic in 11 seasons:

 

Doesn't look too bad on the chart, but he turned 30 sometime in February and I'm worried about him slowing down. He has 371 more goals to go, which feels like a lot at this point. We need him to score at 60 to 70 goals a season for at least the next 3 seasons before he can start to wind down. As ever, I tend to think we're behind the curve and it's a hard task, but not impossible.

 

Results

 

Not a truly great season this time around. It looks good on paper:

 

but it wasn't as convincing as previous seasons. We won the league easily, but while we won every game last year, this year we went 31-5-2 with 109 goals for and 19 against. A very good season to be sure, but actually our worst season for years.

 

When it came to the cups we won everything again, but the margins were often much tighter than in previous years: We won the Scottish Cup Final 1-0 over Rangers and the Betfred Cup Final 4-0 over Inverness (two to Armstrong). We won the Euro Super Cup on penalties over Tottenham and the Club World Championship 4-0 over New York City.

 

In the Champions League, we beat Tottenham 3-0 over two legs, then Sporting 3-2, then Chelsea 3-1. In the final, we beat Juventus 3-0, with a hat-trick to Armstrong:

 

I'm not sure why the performance was down, apart from it being a year of transition with some of the older players on their way out and new players coming in.

 

Awards

 

No World Player of the Year award for Armstrong this year (those days are done it seems), but he did win the Scottish Premiership Player of the Year award again:

 

And they must have got sick of my whinging as they made me Manager of the Year! 

 

Goal Keeper Dramas - Update

 

Last season, I mentioned that my hopes were pinned on Alex Domenichini to put our keeper dramas behind us. This is how he shapes up:

 

He performed really well over the course of the season and is happy to take private praise (meaning no morale problems), so it's looking good.

 

Anyway, onto season twelve!!

Edited January 15, 2017 by scratch99

[BatiGoal]

Great going, mate! Only those who attempt scoring 1000 goals know how tough a ride this is. Hope he makes it!!

[Real_Random]

Great season mate. Now all you have to do is keep Armstrong from retiring. KIU 

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Great going, mate! Only those who attempt scoring 1000 goals know how tough a ride this is. Hope he makes it!!

Thanks! It's been a much longer and more difficult journey than I envisaged when I set out, but it's added so much to playing the game. Wouldn't change it for the world, even if he doesn't make it in the end.

[Scratch]

Just now, Real_Random said:

Great season mate. Now all you have to do is keep Armstrong from retiring. KIU 

Thanks. Yes, I've called him into the office and told him retirement's not an option. I gave him a 4 year contract to keep him thinking long term and I'll do that each year from now on...

But my main worry is having him fall apart. Coman just turned 31 and has started to disintegrate. I've seen so many players do that, so I'm really concerned it will happen to Armstrong too. I'm sure he can carry on scoring as his attributes disappear, but I'd like to be closer to the target at this point...

[danovic78]

Good going but like you mention I have also seen a lot of players reach 30/31 then just fall apart. Fingers crossed Armstrong stays strong.

[PriZe]

Nice improvement this season  I wouldn't be to worried about his age at this point. This year it seems players age a bit better then they used to so with some luck his stats won't drop as hard. On too the next 371 goals

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, danovic78 said:

Good going but like you mention I have also seen a lot of players reach 30/31 then just fall apart. Fingers crossed Armstrong stays strong.

Thanks. I have a theory (not tested) that playing time is important once a player reaches 30ish, ie if they are not playing regularly then they will fall apart quicker. I was pretty confident in that, until Coman lost a couple of points across the board while he was a regular (although that was over the offseason when he wasn't playing).

Anyway, my hope is that if Armstrong is playing regularly he won't fall apart too bad, but it could be just wishful thinking!

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, PriZe said:

Nice improvement this season  I wouldn't be to worried about his age at this point. This year it seems players age a bit better then they used to so with some luck his stats won't drop as hard. On too the next 371 goals

Thanks mate! Although as I said above, I've seen a lot of players fall apart once they reach 30/31, so interesting that you've found the opposite. Do you think playing time has a bearing on their deterioration? 

[danovic78]

14 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Thanks. I have a theory (not tested) that playing time is important once a player reaches 30ish, ie if they are not playing regularly then they will fall apart quicker. I was pretty confident in that, until Coman lost a couple of points across the board while he was a regular (although that was over the offseason when he wasn't playing).

Anyway, my hope is that if Armstrong is playing regularly he won't fall apart too bad, but it could be just wishful thinking!

Yeah, keep him fit and playing and you should be ok for a good few years yet.

[Scratch]

41 minutes ago, danovic78 said:

Yeah, keep him fit and playing and you should be ok for a good few years yet.

That's good to hear. I guess I don't have much choice but to plough on anyway, but at this point I'd normally have replaced him, so this is new territory for me!

[Scratch]

I'll admit this worried me when I found Messi as a free Agent back in season 8:

 

I'll need Armstrong to go at least until that age and if that's what happened to Messi, goodness only knows what Armstrong will look like! I guess I just need to keep going.

[Scratch]

Season 12 Update 

 

Season 11 was solid, with almost 70 goals, but can Armstrong sustain that now that he's into his thirties? Let's see.

 

 

Transfers

 

There were only a few major changes this year.  

 

Alberto Bravo came in from Althetico Madrid for £47M, as a replacement for 32 year old Simon Tibbling. Bravo's attributes are very similar to Tibbling who has been great for us. Tibbling will be staying on with us until he retires, as he should trigger the manager's son feature. 

Spoiler

 

Anthony Boardman moved from Swansea for £37M, after Kinglsey Coman's attributes dropped several points across the board once he turned 31. 

Spoiler

 

Coman didn't appreciate this at all. He wanted to leave, but no-one wanted to buy him, even on a free. It would have cost too much to release him, so he hung around until the remaining value of his contract was low enough to let him go in the second part of the season. A sad way for a great player to exit the club.

Spoiler

 

 

Injuries

 

This is going to be a long section....  

 

Armstrong was reported to have an injury early in the season, but fortunately this was one of those phantom injuries and he didn't even miss a match (phew!).

 

Unfortunately this one in January was real:

 

 

He missed 4 games and it took a couple more before he scored (and that was a penalty). I also noticed his attributes had dropped, which is normal when a player gets injured, but he'd also had his 31st birthday while he was out. I was worried this may be one of those more permanent changes.

 

He got 7 goals in 3 games and I started to relax. But then he went 4 games without scoring, followed by this:

 

 

He missed 3 games this time, followed by another 3 or 4 games where he couldn't maintain his stamina (and forget about him scoring any goals). His stats had deteriorated further:

 

 

He finally scored another goal in the Scottish Cup Final, but then this happened in the Champions League Final:

 

 

At least he has the off-season to recover (if he can), but this was a truly dismal end to a promising season as you see in the next section. Two of the injuries happened late in the game, so I guess I need to be stricter about bringing him off (even though both times he was still over 75%).

 

We had a lot of injuries throughout the squad this year, so much so that the media wondered how I'd cope with it, which was a nice touch that I hadn't seen before:

 

 

Goals

 

The first half of the season looks pretty good:

 

But... the second half:

 

He ended up with 48 goals in 51 games, the lowest total for many years. 

 

Anyway, that takes him to 677 goals for Celtic in 12 seasons:

 

On it's own, I could have written this season off and looked to get back on track next year. However, there have to be serious question marks about a) whether he can stay fit enough to keep playing long enough to make it to 1000; and b) whether he can even get back to his previous level of ability. I'm not in a positive frame of mind at the moment I'm afraid.

 

 

Results

 

A decent season, but for a change we didn't win everything, faltering at the last stage of the Champions League:

 

We won the league again, easily, going 34-2-2 with 110 goals for and 11 against. 

 

We won the Scottish Cup Final 3-0 over Hearts and the Betfred Cup Final 6-0 over St Johnstone. We won the Euro Super Cup on penalties over Athletico Bilbao, although we somehow managed to have 30 shots to 1 without actually scoring in normal time. We also won the Club World Championship with a 3-0 win over Sporting Lisbon.

 

In the Champions League, we beat Chelsea 2-0 over two legs, then Juventus 2-2 on away goals, then Tottenham 5-1. But in the game that mattered, Armstrong got injured and the team fell apart, surrendering to Barcelona 3-1.

 

 

Awards

 

Last year I wrote "those days are done it seems" about Armstrong winning the World Player of the Year award. It seems I was wrong! I guess that hat-trick in last year's Champions League Final was noticed. The runner up was also a Celtic player (Jay Tanner), which was a nice bonus.

 

He of course won the Scottish Premiership Player of the Year award again, despite his injury woes, and I was Manager of the year again:

 

 

The Future

 

Things are looking difficult for Armstrong. 323 goals remaining and his 31 year old body already struggling. He's going to go down in the history books as Celtic's finest ever player, but reaching 1000 goals looks a step too far. Or is it? We'll be back next season to continue the journey.

 

And I don't normally do this, but given the circumstances, I'll give you a couple of small spoilers from the first few weeks of next season:

Spoiler

And the first 3 games:

See you in a year's time.

[Gonzolito]

Darn, with that unlucky season, you deserved better, I hope next season is better with that nasty lil preview that makes me wanna know moooree ! KIU !

 

[BatiGoal]

Oh man still a decent distance to the finishline but after a bumpy season things seem to be on the up again. The excitement is building, mate, hope you manage to keep Armstrong fit enough.

Next update pls

[Taff]

The England Job and those goals could be what you need, but I'm concerned that playing for Club and Country could lead to even more injuries but I have faith that he won't let you down

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, Gonzolito said:

Darn, with that unlucky season, you deserved better, I hope next season is better with that nasty lil preview that makes me wanna know moooree ! KIU !

 

Thanks! I'm hoping that next season can't be worse! Nice start to it, but I know it won't be like that all season.

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Oh man still a decent distance to the finishline but after a bumpy season things seem to be on the up again. The excitement is building, mate, hope you manage to keep Armstrong fit enough.

Next update pls

Thanks mate! One thing's for sure, this hasn't been a boring and predictable journey.

Just hoping I can keep him fit and then see how close we can get...

[Scratch]

4 minutes ago, Taff said:

The England Job and those goals could be what you need, but I'm concerned that playing for Club and Country could lead to even more injuries but I have faith that he won't let you down

Yeah, I almost left him out of the first match against France, but ended up putting him in (damn media questioned me calling him up!). He scored!

But I think in general that I'm going to leave him out against good opposition and play him against weak opposition, for both club and country. If I overplay him it's not going to end well, but hoping there will be more easy goals...

[PriZe]

Sorry for my late response m8. Pffff this is tense  this can go eitherway atm. Congrats on getting the ITN job! This will at least help.

In regards with my experience ageing. I don't have exact proof, but i have a player on the OME who is still a god (just two points dropped in total) and the same player on EME has dropped more. He still does a great job though. Imo match engine and playtime affect the player a lot. And keep an eye out on training, don't push him to hard! 

Good luck!!

[danovic78]

Tough season there but getting the England could be the boost you need. Keeping him fit seems to be the vital thing here.

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, PriZe said:

Sorry for my late response m8. Pffff this is tense  this can go eitherway atm. Congrats on getting the ITN job! This will at least help.

In regards with my experience ageing. I don't have exact proof, but i have a player on the OME who is still a god (just two points dropped in total) and the same player on EME has dropped more. He still does a great job though. Imo match engine and playtime affect the player a lot. And keep an eye out on training, don't push him to hard! 

Good luck!!

Yeah tense is right.. Every time I'm ready to write it off, something happens that gives me hope again!

Thanks for the tip on training. I just tweaked it: I now have Fitness and Attacking as intensive and Tactics and Motivational as light. I think that's one step down on a normal workload which may help him, but hopefully keeps up the important attributes. Might need to tweak that as we go I guess.