The match of my most recent session was a last 16 Carabao Cup match at home to Wycombe Wanderers. I made 6 changes for this match and chose to give a few fringe and youth players run-outs, a few of the newly promoted youths have been begging for chances kin the last few weeks, so thought this the perfect match to give them their opportunity, against a much weaker side.
The nerves on the young players could be seen straight away with misplaced passes and general anxious play, which was eased when Youth CF Price ran on to a through ball to put us one up.
Wycombe then dominated most of the play, and deservedly levelled through a good header, before going into the lead early on in the second half…
What followed was a late, great comeback performance, with Andre Silva levelling straight from kick off from Wycombe’s second goal in the 82nd minute, with Promising youth talent Gavilan (RMF) latching on and finishing well in the 86th minute to send us into the quarter finals 3-2.
It’s good to see youth players whom I have promoted and developed finally starting to stake claims for places on the bench, my plan going forward is to integrate more promoted youths into the first team rather than always looking for a named signing, FIFA can do the youth player affinity thing quite well too.
Apart from a shaky 2-0 defeat to Bournemouth, our league form has been steady too, in the top 4, and in the UCL spots, heading towards November.
We are the league’s top scorers but have also conceded a few, something that needs to be tightened up heading towards December and the usual ‘ebb and flow simulation’ employed by the game where matches get decidedly tougher.
New signing Emmanuel Dennis is doing exactly what we bought him to do, score goals, with 7 goals in 11 starts, but also has 6 assists to his name, with Phil Foden also bagging 6 goals in 11 from the AMF role.
Key transfer priority for January is a solid DMF, to cover for Decouré and Grujic, as I currently only have 2 youth players for that position, and also cover at LMF position as backup Assifuah suffered a broken toe after coming on as a sub in the cup win, and will be out for 2 months.
FIFAFX.com 
This morning I had that tickle in the mind that said ‘check out the new post’. It does work out, long-term. Hope it continues to go well 🙂
At the end of your cup tie vs Wycombe, the way your players were celebrating made me think that was the final and you’d won it, because that’s the extent of the celebrations you see in PES at the end of a final!
Always good to see the AI in any footy game get straight-from-kickoffed by the human player.
If you really focus this season you could put in a title challenge. I think you’ve got the players, and you’ve put in the seasons. Hopeful?
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NG – Thats why I left the celebrations in at the end, because in all my previous 5 seasons I’ve gone out of the cups at the first round or second, so to play a relatively inexperienced youth squad, in the last 16, and survive a banana skin against lower league opposition, and come from behind to win and put us in to the quarters, with goals coming from 2 youth player debutants, added a sense of elation to the result, and the crowd picked up on it 😉
Its a shame PES has muted down such things that used to make it great, the attention to details, such as trophies, celebrations and general atmosphere, it does a lot right but gets so much basic stuff wrong, bring back that Japanese trance pop soundtrack and on pitch medal presentations!!!
The aim for this season for myself , exceeds the board expectations, they want me to finish in a Europa league slot, I want Champions league, and I’m quietly confident of being able to mount a title push, depends how the Dec-Feb momentum swing the game gives you affects my form.
A cup run or even win and european place finish would be a satisfactory and successful season.
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Paul – I think even if/when you hit the ‘sticky spot’ (whether it’s scripted or not, it’ll come), you’ve got enough experience with the game now and the squad strength, to grind out a result, and to make the bad runs shorter. That’s often the difference in our much-trumpeted so-called ‘real life’ as well. I.e. when the likes of Burnley hit a bad run, it tends to be a long one that needs a huge collective club-wide effort to turn around. When a Man City or Liverpool have a bad run, it’s usually only a handful of results before recovery. That’s the difference in real life between top and bottom – bounce-backability – and so it goes with made-up life too, in CM and ML. You should at least aim for a CL spot this season, and look at anything else as underachieving.
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Well put NG. I hope now I know what the game throws up and how my team play, that I can ride out any sticky patches and avoid a run of 11 defeats like last season.
If I don’t achieve CL next season I will consider it disappointing, Europa would be more realistic but aim
High and hope for the best.
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Paul – very well timed post as it echoes a lot of my thoughts at the moment. This season I have a 38 man squad but have had to use every player at some point as I am still in the Champions League, FA Cup and looking to win the league. This means you play a lot of games. The part I look forward too most is seeing some of my youth players in action in the lower priority games. This gives me an indication as to who I can rely upon if I need to go to them for a league game. I played one such game against Leicester away as I had no option but to put in second eleven side as 3 matches followed in 5 days. I won 1-0 in a scrappy game, which felt the most rewarding of them all. Each youth player has thier own individual charachteristics. There are 3 players who are week in week out regulars in my team who I have built up since the age of 15/16. They are now rated 88, 86 and 83 respectively.
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Paul – I was looking on the Chronicles this morning and must have missed your conversation about this blog. I was genuinely saddened to hear how you felt about the reaction to your blog. This year I have had one of the most memorable career modes of my gaming history. This blog has also played a part in that as it somewhere for me to share this experience and follow yours and others who are starting out on FIFA. We live in an age with youtube where I can imagine it is very difficult to get the following for a blog but thank god for sites like this as I am not a social media person and it is my little place I can go to. As for the content I love your posts as they are very well written and varied in content as they give us a snapshot of every aspect of participation in a career mode and the immersion we get from them. Be patient as I really do think you offer something different as I haven’t seen anything like it on a FIFA career mode. Keep up the excellent work and content as your time and effort is very much appreciated.
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I echo Darryl’s comments above, this blog is the best place on the internet to read, share and discuss Career Mode stories. Long live the blog.
I started season 3 yesterday evening with 2 defeats and a lucky win so panic bought a 32 yo CAM on the transfer list without scouting. I got him for £2.5m and £11k per week (my next highest earner is on £5k) Luckily for me he’s just what I needed. I won my next two games, including a 4-0 against Millwall.
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Thanks Darryl, appreciate it mate.
My little whine wasn’t in any way based on ‘I dont get enough attention’ so hope it didn’t come over like that, it was purely based on ‘Is the content I post engaging for people? Do they want to see something else’ ? type approach.
As I said its time consuming to pull regular posts together with bespoke graphical content, videos that have to be edited etc, so just making sure that if I’m taking the time to do that, then its what people enjoy reading, I shall be continuing no worries there.
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Cook – You took a risk there! I’ve been burnt a couple of times by identifying a player in a position I need and panic buying without scouting only to find that his 73-86 potential was actually a 68 OVR and not good enough to fit in.
Had one of the best sessions on the game to date last night, a few really epic matches including a barnstorming Midlands Derby at home to Leicester, I went for the ‘Unnerve them’ approach in the pre-match presser, which only made Leicester come out firing.
They went 2-0 up in the first half, after a sitter was missed by Dennis and I had another 2 shots cannon of the bar and post.
Then I got my shit together, and came out 5-2 winners, with 2 from Foden, 2 from Dennis, and Captain Dekouré baggingtoo, great game, had everything.
Also squeezed past Swansea on Pens to move into the Carabao cup Semi’s.
Good times,
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Paul – It didn’t come across that way at all and understand why you raised it.
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Cheers Darryl, as mentioned to cook just above, last night was one of the best sessions I’ve had as a run of continuous games in any footy game since PES 2011.
I continue to be amazed at the level of detail that goes into the match and celebrations, and general presentation and atmosphere, just subtle things that really make a huge difference.
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Paul – glad that the bad run of games a while back indeed looked to be just a bump in the road. As NG said, IF it comes you are now well-prepared for it. I like that youths are starting to play a role as I always overlook them in FIFA. Might have to pick some up myself soon. Speaking of developing players : I’ve noticed some players declining by 1 OPR if I train them separately. To my surprise it is a “common issue” not yet addressed by ea. Is this true and if so, what can be done?
If I may weigh in ontl the whole blog thing ; even though I’m a semi-regular commenter at best, I appreciate the effort and output and it being something else than NG’s blog . I find they complement each other nicely.
My perspective on and experience with it: I’ve had a Dutch MMA site for 6 years now and it didn’t get any traction until after a few years. Now granted MMA is a niche sport in a small country like the Netherlands. But it was still disheartening at times until it started picking up (currently not doing anything with it – got hit with a copyright issue after having used two widely available photos and had to pay up – that was painful) and spiked when McGregor came on the scene. I’ve seen other competitors fall by the wayside in the meantime. Longevity is the key imo.
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#1 – I have to be honest I haven’t seen the ‘bug’ where a player declines if you train him seperately, and I often train players individually.
I have several pre-defined training regimes setup, one for DEF, one for MID, one for ATT, then several focusing on individual players.
The individual regimes, I have the same player filling all 5 training slots, with a different routine assigned to each to develop different abilities, I’ve done this since season one, its crucial as often the board objectives include developing youth players in certain positions by x number of OVR points, and I have never ever seen any youth players decline through training, only ever increase.
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Curious that Paul – maybe because you had an ongoing career mode save already. In any case I’m not seeing any development which is kind of defeating the purpose of career mode. A few that are on the aforementioned -1 and others just day “n/a”. Not sure what to make of this… Bummer.
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#1 – Ongoing career mode ??? In what way? I started a new career in Fifa 19 just like you would have ?
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On the subject of training mine replicates Paul’s with a few tweaks. An example being that I have got a RM that I have trained from a youth who has a handy rating of 89 and now he is 23 there is very little extra you can get out of him if you go down the suggested training methods. So now I focus on his weaker side of the game which is defending where there is still room for improvement.
My first FIFA league title is now within grasp as I have a 17 point cushion with 7 matches left. I am glad I do have this security net as the difficulty has shot up the last two games. With a combination of injuries and match fatigue my players are running on empty. I am still in the Champions League (Quarters) and FA Cup (Semis) and have fixtures popping up like
Whac-A-Mole’s.
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Darryl, its virtually impossible for you to lose the title from that position, you may even be on for a Treble!!!! That would be some achievement!!
all going well for me at the moment, New post coming up at 10am with details.
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Paul – I meant to say your career was already ongoing when I started mine, with perhaps the bug having been introduced in a later patch and your career mode save not being affected by it, contrary to mine.
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#1 – Ahhh I see – not aware of any bug that causes this, have you tried googling it see if it pops up for others?
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Paul – I did and it seems some users are affected by it, not all. Have resumed training individually myself now and do see some players growing again so it seems a temporary / not-affecting-all-players thing? In any case seems good now, was a bit worried that I was on CM save without player growth, that would’ve been disappointing.
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#1 – Glad it’s mainly sorted itself out, do you save training routines so you can recall them with the options button? Very handy and good to setup schedules for individual players.
The player development in this game is superb, and a huge chunk of the enjoyment. I’ve just fielded a mainly all youth side to play MK Dons away in the FA Cup, my CF price showing some great abilities to grab a brace and the RM performing superbly and grabbing a goal, both will now be integrated slowly into the first team, all from signing as 50 rated fledgling 16yr olds.
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