Career Scratch attempts - Robbie Keane - 1 Season 30 Goals?

[Scratch]

A week or so ago, I read @arobbo92 's attempt to take an aging Robbie Keene to 30 goals at Spurs. Then I saw @Cockers2505 also had an attempt.

 

Now, I am supposed to be starting season 5 of a 22 season career in my double 1KC attempt, but when I saw this, I figured I'd halt PinaColada temporarily and give this a go.

 

I've always liked Robbie Keane, both in real life football and in FMM, FMH, FM, CM... I have fond memories of putting together a Newcastle team in CM00/01 with Shearer, Viduka, Owen and Keane fighting for two spots up front and Keane actually did the best. Both Viduka and Owen ended up at St James Park in real life later on, but Robbie never made it (though he almost did). 

 

I also like this challenge as it lines up with most of my recent FMM experience. It's a goal scoring career that involves an aging striker, just like the closing stages of my Armstrong 1KC. I figured I could use many of my learnings from that. But...

 

I'll say this up front: I've done terribly in this career. And I mean terribly.

 

It's only half way through the season, but Keane has only scored 7 goals in 23 games.

 

 

Tottenham are 8th in the League and were knocked out of the League Cup in the third round. We regularly get a lot more chances than the opposition, but we don't take them.

 

It's hard to see how I could have done worse.

 

On the bright side... some of you will have heard me say that I was due a failure (Armstrong: success; Mitrovic: failure; Vardy: success). So at least I've got that failure out of the way now and I can return to PinaColada with the sure knowledge that I will succeed there.

 

The biggest mistake I made was judging where Keane was in abilities. He deteriorated much faster than I thought:

 

 

I thought the Armstrong 4 3 2 1 tactic may still work, so I built the team around that. But it didn't work at all, with Keane only scoring 1 goal in 7 games and that was a penalty. 

 

At that point, I decided to move to the Older Armstrong 2 5 3 tactic, and that has worked better, but still not good enough.

 

Keane isn't taking enough of the chances he gets (maybe I should try him as an AF instead of Poacher in case he's shooting from too far out).

 

A major problem with the change in tactics was that my transfer strategy no longer made sense. I had sold Harry Kane to fund the purchases of Coman, Malcolm and Dudu, but although Coman could play back a line as a normal winger, Malcolm and Dudu could only play as more attacking wingers. I've been training them in that position, but neither has progress and Dudu has gotten frustrated (although he retrained successfully in PinaColada). And with Harry Kane gone, the switch to 3 strikers left us undermanned up front and left me wishing I'd held on to him...

 

Also in the "what went wrong column": Once it became clear this wasn't going well, I didn't concentrate fully in matches. A good eg of this was a game where we were leading 3-1 and I let it play without watching, only to find the final result was 3-3 (and of course the players were all tired because I didn't sub them). 

 

Keane got injured for 10 days, which didn't help, but I'm not sure it would have made much difference:

 

Right now, I'm not sure whether I should play on until the end of the season and see how far I can take him, or whether I should just cut my losses and declare this failed and over. What do you guys think?

[mcandrew003]

I think it was a good attempt at it mate, very unlucky with the amount of shots he had compared to his goals. Hopefully you have another crack at this and show us all what Robbie can do!

[Scratch]

Thanks mate. I think tweaking the tactics could get him better chances, but I'm not sure I'm up for a lot of effort on this one. This was meant to be just a quick diversion from PinaColada. Maybe I'll try again after PinaColada. Although I still may finish the season off (I don't like not finishing things).

[BatiGoal]

23gls needed in the 2nd half of the season with an aging Keane that doesn't look like scoring in front of an open goal? I see no problems here.

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

23gls needed in the 2nd half of the season with an aging Keane that doesn't look like scoring in front of an open goal? I see no problems here.

Haha, no problems indeed!

Well, I did play on and I'm in early April now. I improved the squad in January to fit the 2 5 3 a little better and I've got him scoring more (back to back braces at one point), but there's still no way he's going to make 30. He was out injured for another 3 weeks which hasn't helped...

I've seen enough to believe that if I had chosen the right tactics and teammates from the beginning, 30 would be achievable. But not this time around...

[Ashez]

Wonderful writing but iffy on the pictures holding it together . Unlucky mate, it's a shame he struggled so bad! Massive credit to you for posting it regardless, many wouldn't have bothered but I enjoyed the read. Is it worth continuing? If you're only interested in hitting 30 I wouldn't bother but if the original creator posted it as a challenge it would be worth it for a place on the leaderboard :). @arobbo92

[Scratch]

11 hours ago, Ashez said:

Wonderful writing but iffy on the pictures holding it together . Unlucky mate, it's a shame he struggled so bad! Massive credit to you for posting it regardless, many wouldn't have bothered but I enjoyed the read. Is it worth continuing? If you're only interested in hitting 30 I wouldn't bother but if the original creator posted it as a challenge it would be worth it for a place on the leaderboard :). @arobbo92

Thanks! I didn't put nearly as much effort into writing this one up as I do with my main careers. Just takes too long! But anyway, I saw it through and am about to post the wrap up...

[Scratch]

Wrap up

 

As I mentioned in the comments above, I played on to the end of the season. I like finishing things off!

 

I spent January reshaping the squad to better fit the formation I was now using. Even though Jansen had been our top scorer, we shipped him out for £25.5M, to help fund bringing Dybala to the club (he played as a T alongside Keane and both scored and provided assists). We also picked up Giovinco for £7.5M and he was great too. Along with N'Jie, we now had three forwards with high teamwork and passing etc - two to play alongside Keane and one backup. 

 

For completion's sake, here are all our transfers:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

I didn't want to release that because of one particular name in the Out column that I'm probably going to get grief for!  

 

Anyway, we sacrificed a lot of good players to build up our transfer budget, with the aim of getting some top providers to the club, such as Dybala, Coman and Willian (I called him Marshall up above!). I also picked up a bunch of other players who weren't any better than what I had, largely because big targets like Verratti fell through, and then I had to get what I could. Some of the big signings didn't work out as well as expected (particularly Coman), but there were some surprises (like Giovinci) to make up for it. 

 

Here are our best providers (Coman didn't make it, with only 1 assist in 42 appearances):

 

And as you can see in that image, Keane ended up with 19 goals in 45 appearances. 

 

The second half of the year looked like this:

 

His highlight performance was a brace plus 3 assists, in a 6-1 win over Benfica.

 

Not bad for an old man looking like this:

 

He really went downhill over the course of the year.

 

The injuries didn't help. He had a second 3 week injury in February (good on those Physios though!).

 

As for the team... Well after being knocked out of the League in the third round (mentioned in the previous update), we went and got thrashed 4-1 by West Ham in the 4th round of the FA Cup. We are obviously hopeless in cup competitions.

 

In the League, we clawed our way back up to third with a couple of games to go, but a 1-0 loss to Man City on the final day saw us drop to 4th.

 

Here's that game. If that disallowed goal had been allowed, or any of our other 32 shots on goal had gone in, we would have finished 3rd. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

So, not a great result in the League, but a fantastic fight back from where we were at the turn of the year.

 

We'll we've established we're no good in cup competitions, so how did we go in the Champions League?

 

We thrash Benfica 7-2 on aggregate in the Quarter Final (Keane's wonder game above being the first leg), then we beat Bayern Munich 7-4 over two legs:

 

 

Which set us up for a final with PSG. So far our terrible cup form hasn't been evidenced in the Champions' League, but surely we're doomed in the final? Well, it was a whitewash...

Spoiler

 

Anyway, to sum our season up, it started poorly, but we got better and better as the season progressed. Keane did well in the end, making it to 100 goals for Spurs, but I was really after the 30 goal target and he fell well short of that with only 19.

 

I do think that if a) I'd gotten the tactics right from the start, and b) he'd stayed fit the whole season, and c) we hadn't been knocked out of two cups early, then he would have given 30 goals a good shake.

 

Maybe I'll come back to it sometime... But for now, I'm moving on to other things (and no maybe not right back to PinaColada, although I will be back with that soon).

 

[veerus]

Looks like aging strikers don't fare well in the PL... If someone wanted to attempt a 1k with an extra challenge, it'd be fun to see them do it in the PL with a bottom 10 side.

[Taff]

sorry I missed all this dude (you go away for one weekend and the whole community goes into overdrive)

unlucky on the attempt but this is one hell of a challenge to be fair

[Mr.Manager]

Unlucky Scratch. Definitely a strong second half of the season; at that rate you would have been close to if not at the 30 goal target. You're on fire though, so many careers!

[Ashez]

Glad you decided to finish it and that you managed to turn it around, a very respectable score IMO. 

[Jens]

Not trying to be a bitch or anything (yes, actually I am) but I got you beat ^^

 

[Ashez]

10 minutes ago, Jens said:

Not trying to be a bitch or anything (yes, actually I am) but I got you beat ^^

 

The loveable Jens strikes again!

[Jens]

Just now, Ashez said:

The loveable Jens strikes again!

I'm pettable, nobody ever said anything about having to be loveable. 

[Scratch]

7 hours ago, veerus said:

Looks like aging strikers don't fare well in the PL... If someone wanted to attempt a 1k with an extra challenge, it'd be fun to see them do it in the PL with a bottom 10 side.

Well Keane didn't do so well! But I think a 1KC with a bottom 10 side would probably be achievable - you'd just have to build the team. It'd be a slower start and maybe a quicker finish (ie scoring would slow down quicker at the end), but there'd be enough middle to do it.

[Scratch]

3 hours ago, Mr.Manager said:

Unlucky Scratch. Definitely a strong second half of the season; at that rate you would have been close to if not at the 30 goal target. You're on fire though, so many careers!

Thanks mate, he definitely did a lot better when I got my act together LOL! As for the careers, it's weird because I am a one career at a time person. I just couldn't resist this one or the second chance one... But I won't have more than 2 on the go at once...

[Scratch]

6 hours ago, Taff said:

sorry I missed all this dude (you go away for one weekend and the whole community goes into overdrive)

unlucky on the attempt but this is one hell of a challenge to be fair

No worries mate - there are at least 2 of your careers in my "must catch up soon" list. I can't keep up with all the gold around here at the moment...  

added 0 minutes later

1 hour ago, Ashez said:

Glad you decided to finish it and that you managed to turn it around, a very respectable score IMO. 

Thanks mate, I was happy enough with where it ended. Can't win them all!

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Jens said:

Not trying to be a bitch or anything (yes, actually I am) but I got you beat ^^

 

Bitch away mate, you did a great job and sure did have me beat (well, except for in the Champions's League  )

[Cockers2505]

Unlucky @scratch99 a good shout, its not as easy as it sounds, we have challenges and careers where people are scoring for fun, but putting Keane in the latest Spurs side and getting him to score 30 is not an easy ask, especially as you stated his Stats drop so quick. I am going to attempt this again at some stage, but not as a sole striker, I'll try with 2 up front to assist him along the way probably.

[Jens]

20 hours ago, scratch99 said:

Bitch away mate, you did a great job and sure did have me beat (well, except for in the Champions's League  )

I always envy the people who can win it in their first season. Or their second when they're playing Celtic. Stuff to be proud of.

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Cockers2505 said:

Unlucky @scratch99 a good shout, its not as easy as it sounds, we have challenges and careers where people are scoring for fun, but putting Keane in the latest Spurs side and getting him to score 30 is not an easy ask, especially as you stated his Stats drop so quick. I am going to attempt this again at some stage, but not as a sole striker, I'll try with 2 up front to assist him along the way probably.

Thanks mate. Yeah this one didn't work out, but I think I could get closer next time. I used 3 upfront this time (with teammates with high teamwork) and he did much better than when he was up there by himself. Hope you do give it another go - I'll be following your attempt.

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Jens said:

I always envy the people who can win it in their first season. Or their second when they're playing Celtic. Stuff to be proud of.

I spend a LOT of time on the CL games once we get into the knockout stage. I'm constantly checking the opponent's tactic and adjusting mine to take advantage, etc. I can't keep that up most of the time, but I do make the effort in the CL as it's so important to improving your reputation. But even then, the Celtic one surprised me.

[Ashez]

The only time I ever leave the click and play model is if I'm a smaller side and in the latter stages of  Europe. I don't see the point in the league as in the above case you're usually good enough for the league and if you're a lesser club in a league my set up will reflect that anyway etc.