The Blyth Spartans Go For More Trophies
So, my eighth season at the helm of the Blyth Spartans begins… After tying to make my team better in pre season I was quite confident that we could achieve something nice this season too. And there was silverware on the table right from the start, the Community Shield! We had to face Tottenham, the team that won the FA Cup last season. It was an even game but ultimately two of my new signings made the difference: Daniel Aquino scored on his debut and goalkeeper Sergio Asenjo kept a clean sheet with a few nice saves. There was another trophy for the club but there were some bad news to go with it: Mickey Wordsworth was going to be out for five weeks and new signing Simon Vukcevic was going to be on the sidelines for two months!
Ironically, the first game in the new Premier League season was away at Bolton, at the stadium where we celebrated winning the title last season. We won 4-1 back then and we did something similar now, we won it 3-0 although Bolton had some very good counter attacks and they deserved to score a consolation goal. Unfortunately for them there was a great keeper in our goal :)
Next up, at home with Fulham. We dominated the whole 90 minutes of it but we missed enormous chances… The referee was in a generous mood, he gave a penalty kick for each team… When the strikers miss the defenders must come to the rescue. Gianni Zuiverloon did just that, he scored his first goal for the club and brought us the three points.
We had only the UEFA Super Cup game ahead of us in August but right before that they announced the Champions League groups. We were seeded 3rd, I didn’t hope for an easy group but… They handed us one of the toughest groups, with Real Madrid and AC Milan! It’s going to be tough but we’ll do our best to get to the first knockout round…
And we had a chance to test Real Madrid and see what they’re made of before the group games, the UEFA Super Cup in Monaco! It was a thriller, a very beautiful game with both teams trying to score goals. I’ll let you watch the highlights, just two quick mentions before that. One of their defenders got sent off during extra time. The other thing is that I sent in Cristian Suarez in the… 106th minute to replace an exhausted Tiberiu Radulescu. What he did in those 15 minutes he had to play will go down in the history books!
You can call it inspiration or pure luck but he had a couple of chances to make it a hat-trick! Anyway, here’s another trophy for the Spartans!
We’ll get to know AC Milan in September, they’ll be coming at Croft Park! Our fixtures were quite messed up due to the Champions League games and international call ups, I hope they won’t have us play 3 games in 4 days like last season…
It was a great start to the new season, with two trophies in our hands and two Premier League wins. If it wasn’t for those two injuries it would have been perfect!