Blyth Spartans FM 2009 Story — The Fourth Season Begins!

So, here we go again! After the unexpected triumph in League Two last season the Blyth Spartans prepare for a brand new challenge: surviving in League One! My Football Manager 2009 story has been entirely successful until now, we won consecutive promotions from Blue Square North, Blue Square Premier and League Two. Could we be in for another surprise next season? Honestly I don’t really now what to expect, we shall see…

Anyway, the board offered me a new three year contract and they were delighted that I accepted the offer, there were several rumors linking my name to dozens of League One teams. I’m a true Spartan now, there’s no way I could leave the club!

I told them that we could achieve a top half place at the end of the season but that didn’t increase my transfer budget, a lousy 16,000 euro! The annual wage budget that the board offered wasn’t too rich either, only 1.3 million euro. Well, I guess I have to find cheap or free players again, I’m beginning to get used to that :(

First of all I tried to clear some of the wage budget, so I sold 8 players for a total amount of 140,000 euro. Unfortunately only 15% of that went back into my transfer budget but I felt that the wages were more important.

I sold my goalkeeper, Martin Hansen, because I found a couple of better keepers for free. His sale was a new record for the club, beating the previous all time record set back in 1980 when striker Les Mutrie was sold to Hull for 35,000 euro!

I brought in 13 players instead, most of them on free transfers. Only 9 of these players will play for the first team next season, the rest of them are promising youngsters that I’ll probably send out on loan to get some experience.

The most important transfer was Sandor Vaida, a Hungarian left winger. He wasn’t found by my scouts, I knew him from my previous game, the Chester game, when I brought him back when we were playing in League One and I kept him in my squad until the biggest success in my career, the Champions League Final against Barcelona. He’s a good hard working winger and he will be one of the best players in my team, I’m sure about that.

The goalkeeper that will replace Martin Hansen is Slovakian Under 21 international Filip Mentel. I’ve been following him for a couple of years and now his contract with Swindon finally ended, so I signed him for free. He grew up with Manchester City and I have faith in his ability, he can be one of the best keepers in League One at the end of the season.

I needed a good centre back for the better strikers in League One and my scout in Spain provided a good target: Daniel Sanchez Ayala from Real Sociedad «B». He was a Liverpool player at the beginning of his career, now he has the chance to prove that he has what it takes to make it in England.

And now the cherry on top of the cake, a regen Japanese player! I can’t send my scouts out of Europe and that’s why I’m constantly browsing through the national teams in Asia, Africa or South America for cheap good players. When I saw that this player is already playing in the Japanese senior team at the age of 18 I began following his progress. He has played 15 games for the national team and scored three goals so far! His contract with a Japanese club was expiring in December 2011, so I contacted the player and he signed a contract with us! He will join the club on the 1st of January 2012, I really hope he’ll be a big hit with the fans. And I also hope that he can make a big progress as his abilities are quite high for an 18 year old.

But there’s a lot to do until January. First, the friendly games before the season. With all the new players in my squad I had quite bad results in the friendly games, 3 wins and 2 defeats, and we generally played modestly. I guess we’ll get better once the new players will adapt.

As always, everybody is predicting that we will have a long painful season. And, as always, the media predict that we will finish… 24th out of 24 teams! Yea, I heard that before ;)

I have 23 players in my first team squad for the new season and my assistant manager thinks that we have enough squad depth to face the challenges in League One.

I was just preparing to wrap up the pre season, all the friendly games were played, I bought the players I needed, sold the ones I didn’t need anymore… We were again about 200K above the annual wage budget, I couldn’t do anything about that. I didn’t want to make any more signings but when one of my scouts told me about this Irish regen striker I just couldn’t say no. His name is Christian Short, he’s 19, and I believe that he’s a very, very, promising youngster. I couldn’t resist the temptation and I signed him, I hope that he will prove that I was right :)

That’s about it, my fourth season is beginning. What do you say, will we be capable of another miracle?