Blyth Spartans — Premier League December 2013

Finally, the last month of 2013… It’s been a great year again for my Blyth Spartans, we achieved the unthinkable and we got promoted to the Premier League. Even more, we played like a good solid team so far against the tough opponents in the Premiership and we were safely in 4th place at the end of November. We had another 5 games to play in December, 5 games that would decide our place in the table at the halfway point of the season.

The first match of the month was also the most difficult one, at home with league leaders Manchester City. We were very lucky to score an early goal, Pavlyuchenko‘s 10th of the season, but after that goal Manchester City were attacking like maniacs! There were shots coming at us from everywhere, crosses from both flanks, a siege! They were leaving huge gaps at the back though and I hoped that my quick players could score on a counter attack. Nicao did just that in the 20th minute, we were 2-0 up! Manchester City continued to attack like there was no tomorrow but somehow we managed to hang in with the help of our keeper, Itumeleng Khune, he was absolutely fantastic. It was 2-0 at the break but the siege continued in the second half. And before we knew it it was all square again, Manchester City scored two well deserved goals. I was afraid that we were going to lose it but Nicao produced another one of his moments of magic and scored in the 72nd minute! We were very confident and six minutes later a shot by left winger Martin Panik rattled the crossbar! The Citizens tried to react but we just couldn’t lose it anymore, we closed the gaps and gave our fans a great victory!

A few days after that historic win some rumors emerged, it looked like a consortium planned to take over the club! I never experienced something like this before in Football Manager 2009 so I really don’t know what to expect. If any of you knows more about this type of situations maybe you could give me more details. At that moment the club was 7.5 million euro in debt, so maybe the takeover could give me more money for transfers, I surely hope that would happen :)

Anyway, let’s get back to football. We had a very difficult away game coming up at Crystal Palace, a very good team that was in 5th place in the Premier League table! Their star player is French midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin, a great box-to-box midfielder. Their whole squad is very aggressive, fast and athletic and I was quite sure that we had a very tough one ahead of us. The game was pretty even but we failed to make our chances count and that showed on the scoreboard. Crystal Palace showed more cutting edge, they played better upfront and made the difference.

We had to recover quickly from that defeat, our local rivals from Newcastle were coming to visit. Our fans definitely wanted us to win the match and their fans wanted the same thing. What came out of it was a very even game, both teams looked like they were afraid to lose it. In this type of game it’s the individual that can make the difference and we have just the right player to do that: Nicao brought us the win with a perfectly placed shot.

After all that tension we had an easier game coming up, at home with 19th placed Hull. They were still looking for a win this season, they only achieved seven draws in the last 17 games. It wasn’t as easy as it might look but Roman Pavlyuchenko definitely made it easier with his first hat-trick for The Spartans.

In the meantime Arsenal sacked their manager, Rafa Benitez, and it seemed that I was on their shortlist. Their final choice was quite surprising, Patrick Vieira will be their new manager! I wouldn’t have accepted an offer anyway :)

The last game of the year was a tricky away one at Wigan, they were playing above expectations and were in 10th place. My defenders were probably thinking more about Christams trees, it was a crazy game! We were 1-0 up after 10 minutes, then Wigan made it 2-1 at half time. Pavlyuchenko scored a double right after the break but Wigan made it all square again! It was a very entertaining game but I would have preferred a boring one and a win.

Despite that high scoring draw we were in 3rd place at the halfway point of the season, absolutely unbelievable! If you would ask me how we managed to do that I wouldn’t know what to answer. We just tried to play every game to win it and we won 11 of the 19 games that we played… Relegation is no longer a concern, it would be impossible to lose all the advantage that we have over Portsmouth or Birmingham in the following 19 matches. My goal right now is to get an Europa League place at the end of the season and that probably means that we have to finish somewhere between the 5th and the 7th place. Right now we are only 4 points above the 7th placed team, so it’s going to be tight and tough.

We were quite lucky so far because we had only a few mild injuries and in most cases I was able to send in my best players. My strikers were definitely the best players in the team, Pavlyuchenko and Nicao scored 29 goals so far and have been driving the team forward. Centre back Cristian Suarez was also pretty solid so far and young midfielder Mickey Wordsworth played very well considering his lack of experience. It’s pretty obvious that the backup players upfront are far away from the ability that my regular strikers showed and whenever one of the two would get injured we’d have huge problems.

January will be quite tough, we’ll gave the important FA Cup 3rd round clash with Newcastle and then difficult home games with Fulham and Tottenham.

I surely could use a few new players but there are no transfer money left and the way budget is also pretty tight. If we won’t have too many injuries we’ll be able to fight for an Europa League place. If not, I’ll still be glad that we survived in the Premier League ;) Again, I don’t know what to expect from that board takeover, if there will be some transfer money as a result of that I might strengthen the squad with a couple of good players.