Here we go, the last two games of our fantastic first season in the Premier League. We were in 6th place at the end of April and we only needed one point from the last two games be 100 percent sure of an Europa League place.
We had the perfect opportunity to grab that point right from the first match, at home with 14th placed Wigan. Our last game with them was a high scoring draw, it finished 3-3 in December. We seemed to do better this time, we dominated the first 45 minutes and Wigan barely came out of their own half. But when they did, they scored! It was 1-1 at the break and we continued to push forward in the second half. Wigan were creating a few chances for themselves on quick counter attacks but we were missing huge chances, huge. Pavlyuchenko finally banged one in in the 76th minute and it looked like we were going to give our fans a nice victory. In the last minute our keeper probably has some other thoughts on his mind, he passed the ball straight to an opponent. He scored and didn’t even say thanks… It finished 2-2 but we should have won it.
But it was quite enough, the 6th place was ours!
After that game I received the first big job offer from a Premier League club, Aston Villa. I was shocked by their wage budget, almost 60 million euro per year while I have only 6 million at Blyth! Obviously, I declined the offer, I want to take the Spartans through Europe ;)
The last game of the season didn’t matter anymore, Newcastle looked determined and willing to win it and we didn’t do much to stop them.
Here’s the final league table, Manchester City won the title and my Blyth Spartans qualified for the UEFA Europa League! West Bromwich will go straight back to Championship along with Hull and Birmingham. I checked your comments and guess what, Ben E predicted at the end of our Championship season that we would finish 6th in the Premier League! He might have been joking though, he also said that we would win the Carling Cup :)
Vagner Love was the top goalscorer and my Roman Pavlyuchenko was right behind him with 20 goals! Nicao almost won the most assists award but Vagner Love won that one too.
Here are the squad statistics for this season, centre back Cristian Suarez had the highest average rating at the end of it, 7.35 from 36 appearances.
But the revelation was central midfielder Mickey Wordsworth, he had an average rating just above seven and made 10 assists for the team. The good performances earned him the first international cap for England and I can say that he’s getting better every day. Several clubs want him badly and now he wants to move to a bigger club… Hopefully I’ll be able to persuade him to stick around, I guess we’ll be a big club soon :)
And now the other important results. Liverpool won the FA Cup after a tense final game with Arsenal. This result means that 7th placed Manchester United qualify for the Europa League…
The UEFA Europa League was won by Ajax Amsterdam, they defeated Shakhtar Donetsk with a last minute goal.
And finally, an English team won the UEFA Champions League, Chelsea won against Barcelona to lift the trophy. And that means that even 8th placed Crystal Palace will get to play in the Europa League!
We were given 17 million euro for finishing 6th and with around 30 million euro in the bank my board decided to invest in a new stadium expansion. Not too much though, only 400 seats!
There you go, that was my first season with the Blyth Spartans in the Premier League, a great season for the club. We have a new board now and some money to spend, hopefully they’ll give me a decent transfer budget that would allow me to get some better players. After a quick look at the squad I’d say that I’ll need a keeper, a right back, maybe even a left back, a centre back, a central midfielder, a pair of left/right wingers and a striker. Not too much…
alex
24 августа, 2009 at 00:07
i’m playing with brasov,i won 2 straight romanian championships,and made de ch league semi finals twice in a row,and i am so frustrated,that i can’t get better players,i have money,but nobody wants to join my team,have you had this problem?
JohnnyKarp
24 августа, 2009 at 01:21
Well done Alex! Which year are you in? About the better players, I guess they don’t want to come because the club/country does not have a high enough reputation. So you should focus on getting young wonderkids to drive your team to the top.
eddie eddie
24 августа, 2009 at 03:52
wow well done brilliant so far I have a question if you win all the cups you want with blyth are you going to resign?
alex
24 августа, 2009 at 10:38
come on,you must be kidding me,isn’t country reputation dynamic?,isn’t it logical,that a romanian team had a lot of succes in the champions league,that the romanian league increase it’s reputation?,if it isn’t true,i’ll stop playing the game
JohnnyKarp
24 августа, 2009 at 13:15
@Alex
I guess it increases but I imagine that it takes a lot of time for the Romanian league to grow to the level of the Premier League or Serie A. One thing is pretty clear, Messi won’t come to play for a Romanian team, ever :)
@Eddie
Thanks mate. I didn’t think about it but probably if I win all the stuff I’ll go for a new challenge.
marvin
24 августа, 2009 at 14:17
hello again, but sorry for asking always
johnny, what nations and leagues did you select before starting a new game????
Ahmed Shah
24 августа, 2009 at 17:00
No probs, Johnny, well done again!! I guess I was being a bit over hopeful in my last post ;-) BPL Champions Next Season Mate !!! ;-) ;-)
JohnnyKarp
24 августа, 2009 at 17:29
@Ahmed
Thanks mate, I would surely love winning the title but it would be some kind of a miracle :)
@Marvin
I selected all the English leagues and all players from Romania for my current game.
marvin
24 августа, 2009 at 18:03
thanks johnny, your truly one of the best!!!!
i think i should start all over again because selecting the major leagues in europe would make my game slow down.
JohnnyKarp
24 августа, 2009 at 18:50
Marvin, that depends on the CPU and RAM memory that you have in your PC. If you have a good CPU (Pentium Dual Core or something similar) and around 2GB of RAM you shouldn’t have problems with multiple leagues.
Dave
24 августа, 2009 at 23:27
Johnny, you are the legend of legends.
A fantastic season mate, I have been busy lately so hadnt had time to follow up but just sat down with a coffee reading Jan to May and the suspense was killing me and I was so tempted during the Feb update to skip to May to see how it ended but i stayed and enjoyed the read.
Bit worrying with the takeover, it would have been criminal if they had sacked you. Think I would have hired a lawyer and sued SI :)
Top job mate and looking forward to reading about the mighty Spartans in Europe and you getting a Champions League spot next year.
JohnnyKarp
24 августа, 2009 at 23:41
Thanks a lot Dave, I’m happy that you didn’t skip the episodes, that means they were not boring :) That takeover business was quite stressful and it didn’t bring much in the end, only a slight improvement to the training ground and some money in the bank. I’m working hard now to find some good players to help us in the European campaign, hopefully I’ll be able to bring some solid footballers to Blyth.
marvin
24 августа, 2009 at 23:48
johnny, can i buy players outside the english leagues eventhough i just only selected the english leagues???, like buying in the lower leagues of germany, spain etc….
JohnnyKarp
25 августа, 2009 at 00:18
Marvin, if you select only the English leagues there will be less players from those other countries in the game database, but you can always select «load all players from» a country or more countries of your choice.
paine
25 августа, 2009 at 19:21
I knew your attack combo was strong but now I realized you have 2 terrific tacklers too, so are you planning to improve your midfield to be more competitive next year?
By the way, not a great expansion for your stadium, your board looks a bit greedy!
JohnnyKarp
25 августа, 2009 at 19:59
Yea, just one more midfielder because I let Stankovic go. The board look a bit cheap so far indeed…
Chris
27 августа, 2009 at 18:12
Good work Johnny! Some questions I hope you don’t mind answering — where did you find the badges for all the teams and how do you load them into the game? Also how did you get the right stadiums for the right teams? ie. St James’ Park when viewing a match at Newcastle.
I would love this more than you can imagine!!!
JohnnyKarp
27 августа, 2009 at 20:24
Thanks Chris. I’m using this logo pack for the logos and for the stadiums I’m using this stadium pack. You can find instructions on how to use them in the respective posts.