Career Sam v Ash 2 - A Unique Hammering

[samhardy]

Sam v Ash 2 - A Unique Hammering

Around 2 years ago at a similar time of year one of the most popular head to heads on vibe came about when @Ashez and myself took on the "Becoming the best in history" challenge in which the aim was to get one player to win the world cup and WPOTY in the same calendar year. After a month of intense competition it finally ended in my favour in extremely controversial circumstances! Link below.
http://vibe.community/forums/topic/23986-ash-and-sam-fail-at-becoming-the-best-in-history/

After a few negotiations this rematch was supposed to happen last year however the poor release of FMH16 and various other reasons stopped that from happening. But, now that the bugs have been removed from this year's game, and with the game a few weeks old now there is no better time to get things started now. The idea we settled upon is an extremely interesting one and has a few twists to make it even more unique, and over the next three seasons of what will surely be fierce competition, will Ash get his revenge or will it follow a similar path to last time?  

In short, this challenge was inspired by Frank Lampard and the simple aim is for an individual player to score a competitive goal against as many oppositions as possible in each season. However it isn't that simple. We will both be selecting two players, one central midfielder and one striker, and a points system will be used to determine who comes out on top. A point will be won for every unique opposition the striker scores against, and two points for every unique opposition the midfielder scores against. Full rules are as follows:

League: Premier League
Club: West Ham United
Challenge Length: 3 Seasons
Transfers apart from two needed: Yes
Price limit for 2 main Players: £20m - The two selected players cannot cost more than £20M combined.
MC at AMC allowed: Yes
Midfielder Must Be English: No
Duo can't have goals for starting club: Yes. The player cannot have scored a goal in English football before.
Goals will count in all competitions apart from friendlies.
After every season, the two players need to be replaced with two different players.

When discussing which team we wanted to use for this challenge, we decided we wanted to be in the Premier League and the club needed to have European football so there were more possible opponents to score against. We ruled out all the big guns and that left a team with a new stadium and a rather tasty transfer budget in West Ham United.

Ash will have his first half-season update up within the coming days and I will follow after that with mine, thank you for reading this and I hope you're looking forward to this match up, and for some of you who were around for the first one, hopefully you're looking forward to the rematch

The challenge has been outlined and the battle has begun but who are you backing to win and who are you going to support? Make sure you leave a comment below letting us know which corner you are in!

[Ashez]

Team Ashez not out in force tonight then  

[Real_Random]

@Ashez for the win, though I wish both challengers good luck

[PriZe]

@samhardy FTW! From my personal experience @Ashez is a poor manager

[billy2shots]

Ash gets his ego massaged enough on here so it's Sam all the way for me. 

[PriZe]

11 minutes ago, billy2shots said:

Ash gets his ego massaged enough on here

[Ashez]

Damn, 2-1 down already! Where's the romance of the unlucky loser coming back for victory?!? 

2 hours ago, Real_Random said:

@Ashez for the win, though I wish both challengers good luck

The main man! Welcome to the team RR

 

1 hour ago, PriZe said:

@samhardy FTW! From my personal experience @Ashez is a poor manager

Excuse me

1 hour ago, billy2shots said:

Ash gets his ego massaged enough on here so it's Sam all the way for me. 

I hope you and Sam are happy together  

[liam1872]

#WeAreAllAshez

[BatiGoal]

Easy one. Those 25 failed attempts on the 'invincibles' challenge are still fresh in my memory.

You got this @samhardy

[Paul186]

Team Ashez all the way

[danovic78]

I just feel that Vibe will be the winner here! *sits on the fence* 

[Ashez]

12 hours ago, liam1872 said:

#WeAreAllAshez

But who's the real one  

6 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Easy one. Those 25 failed attempts on the 'invincibles' challenge are still fresh in my memory.

You got this @samhardy

Yikes, what do I have to do to gain credit around here . We are now enemies! 

1 hour ago, Paul186 said:

Team Ashez all the way

Good lad! Support me and we'll go places! All Hail Ash Sale!!  

1 hour ago, danovic78 said:

I just feel that Vibe will be the winner here! *sits on the fence* 

Lmao, well played! 

[samhardy]

Ash has let down his followers once, don't be brainwashed into supporting him again!

[Ashez]

Table Of Support 

Team Sam

No Prize given

Billy2Shots the lightweight 

Bati-Own-Goal

Team Ashez

Real_AwesomeRandom

Liam1872 The Hero

Cool Paul186 

Undecided 

Indecisive Danovic78

The support is tied but we all know which team is the best! Team Ashez for the win! Make your colours known! 

[billy2shots]

I heard Ashez voted for Trump. 

Just sayin....

[Ashez]

1 hour ago, billy2shots said:

I heard Ashez voted for Trump. 

Just sayin....

Your sources are lying! Lying I tell you! 

 

[PriZe]

3 hours ago, Ashez said:

 we all know which team is the best! Team Ashez for the win!

 

[Ashez]

Ashez Vs Sam
An Unique Hammering
Season One
Part One

The time has come for this head to head to get underway! After what happened last time i'm playing this save for pride, unfortunately my record in head to heads isn't the best but with the support of "Team Ashez" i'm sure i can see this one across the line! Now let's get this update started.

The Transfers

Spoiler

 

Out

I planned on using an edited version of my 433 with players in the FR/L positions, with this in mind i decided to sell some of the spare players i had within the squad as they weren't really needed. Payet would be the left striker, my chosen striker would be central while Antonino will be deployed as the right sided striker, or this was my seasonal plan anyway. 

In

I was pretty happy when West Ham was selected as i thought they had a solid midfield and defence, when i started the save however i discovered their midfield was awful. This led to the purchase of Fellaini, while not a popular option i thought he was an ideal stop gap in my midfield and an improvement on anyone else i had within the team. With the goalkeeper it was a case of he was available and i thought he'd be better than Adrian while Jenkinson was just brought in for some depth as i'm not a fan of Byram in game. 

The Chosen Ones

The Midfielder
Michael Bradley

Bradley seemed the stand out choice but i can hear you screaming at your screen! Yes i know he's played in England before with Aston Villa but in game and on wiki it's stated he failed to score so he's eligible, Sam and myself agreed on no "loophole" sneakiness within this challenge so i also got his permission before starting. It turns out we both had narrowed it down to the same two players, Bradley was my first choice while my second choice was.....Well you'll have to wait for Sam's update to find out. 

The Striker
Casimir Ninga

The second i saw him the decisions was made, what more do you want from a striker! 20 shooting, 16 dribbling and the physical stats of a God! He is lacking in a few areas like his movement could be better but with stats like that and with him being within my budget he was the obvious choice. This lad really excited it, just my type of striker for sure. 

 

Half Season Review

Spoiler

 

The League

At the halfway point things were going rather well as we found ourselves clear in fifth place. Hopefully Europe for next season will be a possibility but we are only two wins off top spot so maybe title talk isn't out of the question. Unfortunately however we do have some issues as the current setup is rather leaky and not scoring enough, hopefully this can be sorted in the upcoming window which you'll see in the next update. 

The Cups

EFL Cup

Unfortunately we crashed out early to Tottenham. 

Europe
Table

Europe on the other hand was a walk in the park as we brushed the opposition aside. We will play Anderlecht in the first knockout round which promises to be an intense fixture.  

 

Fixtures

Spoiler

 

The season got off to a great start.

A few disappointing results followed however, the lack of goals is a real issue. 

We crashed out the league cup but our league form was decent, the defeat to Arsenal was damaging but we picked up some solid results vs the other big boys. 

The year ended in dominating fashion, hopefully this form continues into 2017.

 

The Main Event

The whole point of this challenge is to focus on the two selected players and the unique goals they manage to score, their totals really aren't that important if it's full of padding due to braces or hat tricks and so on. Thankfully at the start of the season you won't play many teams more than once so that's plenty of opportunities to pick up some unique goals. I won't show the main players stats again as the images above are after training, turns out i forgot to take them at the start of the season. 

Injuries

Spoiler

 

Thankfully i only had to deal with one injury during this period as the American missed a month of the season.

 

The Midfielder
Michael Bradley
Results

A very solid total in my opinion, hopefully all those goals are unique though! With the midfielder gaining double points his goals could really swing this challenge. I do feel i've hindered myself using a 433 and using my midfielder deeper but i just don't like using the AMC position. I actually don't know what approach Sam took so this could just be rambling, however i could be in trouble if he manages to get a free scoring AMC within his eleven. I'm worried now....

The Striker
Casimir Ninga
Results

Less than my usual totals but i decided to play smartly with him, if he'd already scored a goal vs the opposition i was playing i'd usually take him off or rest him. That's not to say i'm not slightly disappointed in his performances as i think a handful more could have been possible, however it is fair to say i don't play in England often so he could be doing brilliantly haha. Especially if a majority of those goals are unique as they're all i have to care about for this challenge. 

The Unique Goals

Bradley
Scored: 6
Unique: 6
Points: 12

All of Bradley's goals turned out being unique so the American brings twelve points to Team Ashez! 

Bradley's Unique Goals

Tottenham
Partizan
watford
Stoke
Shakhtar
Manchester United

Ninga
Scored: 23
Unique: 14
Points: 14

Way too many doubles here for Ninga as only 14 of his 23 goals turned out unique which is slightly disappointing. However as this is the first time this type of challenge has been attempted who knows if this is a good starting score or not! Getting Premier League teams and the early exit in the EFL Cup didn't help at all though. 

Ninga's Unique Goals

Everton
Partizan
Tottenham
Watford
Palace
Apol Limassol
Middlesborough
Sunderland
PAS Giannina
Chelsea
Manchester United
Shakhtar
Burnley
West Brom

Evidence

Spoiler

 

 

Points Total - 26

Half a season down and we have 26 points to our name, not knowing if this is any good is driving me crazy already! I'm genuinely happy with how the club form is and how well Bradley is doing, however i am concerned that Ninga hasn't got as many unique goals as i'd hoped. He has half a season to get his tally up however so hopefully he has a solid second half of the season. 

Current Leaderboard

Ashez - 26
Sam - 0

Team Ashez is in the lead, i bet you all feel stupid for joining Team Sam now . 

As always thank for for viewing and please remember to leave a comment, make sure you've picked a side as there is only going to be one winner! 

 

[samhardy]

As you said Bradley was my second choice so interesting to see how he's getting on

[BatiGoal]

Am I too late to swap teams?

Well done Ashez. Sam, there's no pressure on you, none whatsoever.. .. ..

[billy2shots]

Not to shabby Ash but I have faith in Sam. I fully expect his midfielder to bag at least 30 goals on his own. 

[Ashez]

1 hour ago, samhardy said:

As you said Bradley was my second choice so interesting to see how he's getting on

I'm equally interested in how your player does, I would have used him if I didn't feel he was somewhat risky. Bradley being an all round midfielder just felt saver when it came to it. 

1 hour ago, BatiGoal said:

Am I too late to swap teams?

Well done Ashez. Sam, there's no pressure on you, none whatsoever.. .. ..

Just say the word and the support table will be updated  

1 hour ago, billy2shots said:

Not to shabby Ash but I have faith in Sam. I fully expect his midfielder to bag at least 30 goals on his own. 

 

[Thepremiermanager]

Great read so far guys, looking forward to finding out how Sam has gotten on in season 1.

As for which team I'm on... I'll let you know when someone's won! ? #notreallyplastic

[Ashez]

2 hours ago, Thepremiermanager said:

Great read so far guys, looking forward to finding out how Sam has gotten on in season 1.

As for which team I'm on... I'll let you know when someone's won! ? #notreallyplastic

Remind me to add a glory hunter section to the next table of support update  

[Real_Random]

Nice start mate. Now that you are winning you need to keep it like that. KIU

[Ashez]

3 hours ago, Real_Random said:

Nice start mate. Now that you are winning you need to keep it like that. KIU

Just got to nervously way for Sam's update :/. Why did I agree to go first! 

[Real_Random]

4 hours ago, Ashez said:

Just got to nervously way for Sam's update :/. Why did I agree to go first! 

You agreed because it guarantees you being first, no matter what

[samhardy]

8 hours ago, Ashez said:

Just got to nervously way for Sam's update :/. Why did I agree to go first! 

You complained about going second last time

[Ashez]

5 hours ago, Real_Random said:

You agreed because it guarantees you being first, no matter what

More like I didn't fancy doing the OP tbf haha  

1 hour ago, samhardy said:

You complained about going second last time

Next year simultaneously update  

[Paul186]

Good start , I still have faith you will win this