Blyth Spartans — First Season Part Two
Hello my friends and welcome to the second part of my first season at the helm of the Blyth Spartans in Blue Square North. After the first half of the season we were in 9th place, 5 points away from the last playoff place, the 5th. If you remember from the last post the two things that I wanted to do at the beginning of 2009 were to search for good players in the Romanian lower leagues and to find a parent club.
I found a parent club, Swansea, but none of their reserve players wanted to come to Blyth on loan :( The search for good Romanian players went slightly better though.
I signed 8 players from the Romanian lower leagues, 1 goalie, 2 centre backs, 2 central midfielders, 2 attacking midfielders and a promising young striker!
The most promising player of the whole Romanian bunch is definitely Dumitriu Copil, a 19 years old attacking midfielder that played in Scotland for Hearts of Midlothian since he was 16!
With the squad strengthened by the Romanian colony I was convinced that we could battle for a playoff place! And things were beginning to look better right from the start, we won 3 out of the 5 games that we played in January, drew one and lost one to league leaders Gateshead.
We were in 6th place and the battle was on, we had our chance to make it to the playoff! Unfortunately the team lost some of the confidence, we were missing unbelievable chances to win games, so we only won twice in February, along with 2 draws and a defeat. Despite that we still were there, 1 point away from the 5th place!
With the 3 wins that we managed to produce in March we were able to maintain our position, we were there fighting till the end. Unfortunately we lost the last game of the month against Gainsborough although we clearly dominated the game. And the last goal, the goal of their victory was an own goal scored by one of my centre backs :(
Luckily for us we managed to be more concentrated for the end of the season and we didn’t lose any of the last 7 games! More than that, we defeated direct rivals Telford and Tamworth so we achieved a playoff place before the last game!
We finished 3rd and we are going to play Tamworth in the semi final of the promotion playoff!
Our best player this season, the only one with an average rating above 7, was Polish versatile defender Bartosz Dreszler. I signed him for free last summer and I employed him mostly as a left back and sometimes as a right back or centre back. I was very pleased with his contribution to our efforts and he also got his first caps in the Polish Under 21 team!
We had a great season so far but all of it could be ruined if we won’t be able to win the playoff and gain promotion to Blue Square Premier. However, our last run of seven games unbeaten gives me some confidence and I’m sure that we will fight for every ball in the last decisive games of this season! Tomorrow I’ll post the story of the playoff games, don’t miss it!