Blyth Spartans Premier League — October 2013

My Blyth Spartans surprised everybody with the great debut in the Premier League. Most people expected us to struggle to survive but we only lost one of the first 6 games and we were in 4th place at the end of September! We had two «easier» matches ahead of us, with the other two newly-promoted teams, Portsmouth and West Bromwich Albion.

The first one was at home with Portsmouth, the team that took the 2nd place in Coca-Cola Championship with only two goals ahead of my Spartans. They were 16th in the Premier League table and the good new for me was that their best player, Levan Kenia, was injured. We played pretty well in the first half and our right winger, Mario Garay, missed a couple of chances before scoring his first goal. The second came only three minutes later, we were in complete control at half time. Portsmouth tried to react in the second half but a fine shot by Pavlyuchenko from 20 yards out got the three points safely in our pocket.

The next game was away at West Brom, the team that dominated the Coca-Cola Championship last season. They were not looking too good in the Premier League though, they were in 20th place with two draws and 5 losses in the first seven games of the season! They were having huge confidence problems and we had to take advantage of that. However, they were looking pretty determined to get their first win and the first half was even, not many chances to score. We played better in the second half and it was our centre back, Gabor Baranyai, who finally scored his first goal for us from a perfect corner kick by Nicao. West Brom were not looking too dangerous but they got the equalizer also from a corner kick. We put them under pressure during the last minutes of the game but it looked like it was going to finish all square. Dejan Stankovic finally showed his class during injury time, he blasted a furious shot from the edge of the area and it went in, right under the bar! I was quite disappointed with his performances until then, he even lost his place in the first team and came in as a substitute in this game.

It was our first away win but it came with a price, Gabor Baranyai got injured, he’s going to be out for more than a month. We also lost right winger Mario Garay, he got injured with his Colombian national team in a game with Brazil. With these two important players missing we were preparing for a very difficult home game, Chelsea were coming to visit us. They have been disappointing until then, they were in 12th place! The pressure was on them, we only had to have fun out there and play as good as we could.

The first half was very boring, a tactical battle in midfield. There were only a couple of shots on target in the whole 45 minutes, one for every team. We were quite lucky to get the first goal. Vaida made a run on the left flank, passed it inside to Stankovic… Great shot from inside the penalty area, Petr Cech couldn’t reach it, but it thundered off the crossbar… From the crossbar it hit Ricardo Carvalho in the back of the head… and went in! Thanks a lot! :)

We were playing well in the second half, dominating the game, but Chelsea were launching vicious counter attacks. Before we knew it they scored two goals… We were playing well but it seemed that we were heading for a defeat, the first one at home. Daniel Sanchez Ayala didn’t agree with that, it was his first appearance this season and he celebrated by heading in a corner kick! We had a chance to win the game but we hit the crossbar in the 88th minute! Anyway, it was a good result and a very good financial achievement, we got 1.5 million euro in gate receipts!

Next up, another of the disappointing teams of the season, Middlesbrough. They were in 16th place and desperate to climb up the table. We didn’t play too well, Middlesbrough dominated the game but we made the difference with two goals. The first was scored by the «usual suspect», Daniel Sanchez Ayala, from a corner kick. The second was scored by Pavlyuchenko with a perfect header from a great cross by Nicao. Honestly we didn’t deserve to win this, Middlesbrough were better than us but our South African keeper, Itumeleng Khune, made some miraculous saves to give us the three points.

The Premier League table was a bit unbelievable, we were in 3rd place while Arsenal were in 13th and Chelsea in 10th!

We were dominating the Young Player of the Month awards, all the first three players were our youngsters, right back Christos Karakatsanis, midfielder Mickey Wordsworth and the already famous striker Nicao.

The bad news was that our star striker, Nicao, got injured during the Middlesbrough game and he will be out for at least two or three weeks. My two young backup strikers will have to prove their worth in the next games but it’s obvious that they don’t have Nicao‘s ability. November will be a very tough month, with 4 away games out of 5 and with Arsenal and Liverpool waiting to beat us in the last two games. Anything is possible, we could walk away with 5 straight defeats or we might get a few points here and there.

I think that we’ll be absolutely sure that we’re saved from relegation if we reach around 40 points. We have 21 points right now, I definitely didn’t expect to get that many in the first 10 games. I also think that after the 4 league games that we have to play in November our position will get to be more realistic, we might drop down a few places in the table. It will also be interesting to see how we’ll be able to play without our star striker…