Blyth Spartans FM 2009 Story — Second Season Part Two

Greetings my friends and welcome to a new chapter in my Blyth Spartans Football Manager 2009 story. After the first half of the season we were in 5th place in Blue Square Premier with a good chance of fighting for promotion until the end of the season. I didn’t want to get any new players in January as I was quite satisfied with the squad but I couldn’t resist the temptation to offer a contract to Danish Under 21 goalkeeper Martin Hansen. He was released on a free by Liverpool and he chose to sign a contract with us. I really like his way of playing and his personality, so I hoped he would do well for us.

The first game of the new year was going to be the fabulous encounter with Newcastle United in the FA Cup. As I said at the end of last year I didn’t hope to beat Newcastle, I just wanted to enjoy the game and to entertain the numerous fans that came to see the match. Newcastle totally dominated the game and only good goalkeeping and some solid defending made the 1-0 scoreline possible at the end of the game. However, we had great fun along with the 4000 spectators that came to see the game.

We had only one cup competition left, the FA Trophy, and we managed to qualify for the 4th round after having to battle hard against Harrogate and Mansfield. We played only 3 league games in January and we won only one of them, drawing the other two 1-1. Despite that we were still in 5th place, the last place that would qualify us for the promotion playoff.

February started with another draw for us and I was beginning to feel a little bit worried, we had to win a few games soon, otherwise… I managed to get the lads to be more determined and we won the remaining 4 league games! That good streak of wins brought us in 3rd place, it was clear that we were true promotion contenders. We also qualified for the FA Trophy semi finals after two games against Cambridge.

The month of March was going to make or break our promotion hopes. The first four league games brought us 3 wins and a defeat, we were still in with a good chance. Between the league games we also had to play the two legs in the FA Trophy semi final against Blue Square South team Hampton & Richmond. We secured the qualification after the first leg that we won convincingly, 4-0. My main concern were the last two Blue Square Premier games against Kettering and Histon, both away games. We were in 3rd place, Kettering in 2nd and Histon were 1st. We won at Kettering 2-1 and we had a chance to get closer to the 1st spot if we could manage to beat Histon too.

Unfortunately we couldn’t do it. Although we took the lead early in the game we lost the game after missing some unbelievable chances to score. However, it was an even game that could have gone either way. It went their way, so we were back in 5th place, but with 2 games in hand because some of our league matches were re-arranged because of our FA Trophy fixtures.

The first five games in April brought us 4 wins and 1 defeat, a costly home defeat against promotion contenders Dag & Red.

Despite that we secured a playoff spot with three games to go until the end of the season. We were in 2nd place, 1 point behind Blue Square Premier leaders Histon. We had a chance to win the league, awesome!

And our chance turned golden right after the first game. We won 3-1 away at AFC Wimbledon and Histon drew 1-1 their home game against Kettering! We were in 1st place and everything was in our hands, if we could win the last two games we could be the league champions! The first game was quite easy, we won 2-0 at home against Crawley. Histon won their game too, so we were only 1 point above them before the last game.

The last game was a continuous flow of emotions. It was 0-0 at the break, and Histon were leading their match 1-0 at half time. I was afraid that we could lose it right at the end but our striker, Sean Gordon, did his job right after the break. Take a look at the goal, a delicious lob!

And that was it, we were the league champions against all odds! We were promoted to League Two, no playoff needed!

The fans were delirious, they said they would name their supporters’ club after me! The board were quite happy too :)

The board had also another reason to be satisfied, we made a good profit this season, almost half a million euro, taking the club from being 300 K in debt to having around 200 K in the bank. Hopefully I’ll get some transfer money next season :)

But the season wasn’t over, we still had to play the FA Trophy final at the Wimbledon Stadium! We were going to play York, a team that defeated us in the last league game, they won 3-2 at home. But my players were in superb form and they also had outstanding morale. We won the game 1-0 giving our fans another reason to celebrate!

Our best player during this fantastic season was Ryan Carolan, the young Irish centre back that I presented to you in the last post. He finished the season with an average rating of 7.05, scoring 7 goals for us with his great headers from corner kicks. I hope I’ll be able to keep him, there are several bigger teams interested in signing the lad…

In the previous post I was telling you that I was disappointed with our striker, Sean Gordon. He only scored 5 goals for us in the first half of the season, pretty lame for a striker. I couldn’t find any better free strikers on the market in January so i had to give him a second chance. And he didn’t let me down, he scored 15 times in the second part of the season. I won’t forget his decisive goal in the last league game soon but I think I’ll try to find a better striker to face the League Two defenders…

Ionut Adam, a Romanian left winger, was another important player for us. I signed him last summer from an obscure Romanian team and he did very well for us, 16 goals and 18 assists this season!

That was my Blue Square Premier season, we’ll be facing the tough League Two teams next season, it’s going to be pretty difficult. I’ll have a busy pre season as I’ll have to evaluate the current squad and see if I can transfer some good cheap players because I don’t think that I’ll have a huge transfer budget. The good thing is that I have a young team, with promising lads that can grow along with the team. We’ll see, until then enjoy Football Manager 2009, the greatest game ever!