Blyth Spartans - Spirit of the North East

WTAF!!!!

I'm off back down the road to Blyth to watch the bus cruise past Croft park to celebrate the return to the premier league!
 
WTAF!!!!

I'm off back down the road to Blyth to watch the bus cruise past Croft park to celebrate the return to the premier league!

Get down there quick, as we aren't sticking around in Blyth next season ?

A new chairman has come in and because Croft Park is too small we've had to relocate to a completely bizarre location...

Clue: It's not Newcastle... It's not even in the North East!
 
New Ownership and a New Home



After seeing his club take a metoric rise who could blame the outgoing chairman Mr. Platten for deciding that the time was right in 2024 to sell up and let someone else take the reigns?

Certainly not me, as I rang him and thanked him for all the collaboration and good times shared. I'm sure we'll still see him at the games!

Before he left, Mr Platten gave us an idea of the initial budgets that we would work with in the Premier League:

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Wow! Our weekly wage budget had increased five-fold and a transfer budget of nearly £22M! We were truly in dreamland. Now I know that this is still going to be by far the lowest budget in the league but I could certainly improve the team with this to give us a fighting chance at survival.



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But then, the club was sold to local investor, a Geordie named Danny McLoughlin. Mr McLoughlin had made his fortunes in the haulage industry and was keen to invest in Blyth and recognised that we were on such a rapid expansion, and could continue to do so!

Not wanting our potential to be stifled, the first thing Mr McLoughlin does open purchasing the club was greatly appreciated, as he increases our transfer budget to £36.5M!

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However.....


Sigh.

In what is perhaps the stupidest groundshare of all time - eclipsing anything that even Coventry City have done in recent times - the board have decided that we will play our first ever, and what could be our only, season in the Premier League in.... Stoke-on-Trent.

No, not with Stoke City!

We are groundsharing with Port Vale.

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For context of how far away that is, I have included a google maps screenshot below:

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So, our already small fanbase in our small town are being asked to drive for THREE AND HALF HOURS per game to get to the supposedly home games....

How do they respond?

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They sell out the season tickets, which account for around 90% of the ground's capacity!

WHAT A CLUB :love:

However I am slightly worried given that we have not announced plans for a new stadium, and the board won't even hear me out. Surely we are not becoming a new case of the Wimbledon -> Milton Keynes debacle?! Football Manager?!




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In other news, I was offered an interview for the Bournemouth job after Eddie Howe moved into the England manager's office. I of course turned it down.



I also have agreed deals for a couple of very promising young Czech players! Both are still 17 y/o so are not permitted to join yet.


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I think Petr Svejnoha is a wonderkid in the making. Already he would be my best centre back and he looks ready for play in the Premier League. We have agreed a £2.2M deal with Victoria Plzen but he won't join until the following summer (2025) as that is the transfer window after he turns 18. Meanwhile, he should progress well in the first team of one of the Czech Republic's biggest clubs!


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Milan Benes has actually been with us for over a year already but has had to wait to sign his first professional contract - which he will do part way through this season. I found him remarkably playing in the Czech U21s team yet being without a club as a 16 y/o. We agreed a contract and he has been on "trial" ever since. This period has done him wonders as he has learnt English, played regularly in our U18s team and improved a lot!


That's all for now, but the pre-season and transfer update will follow very soon.


Howay Blyth-on-Trent!
 
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Wow. bit of drive aint it! Blyth-on-Trent it is, hopefully new ground is done quickly
 
Pre-Season 24/25 - Preparing for the Premier League


As mentioned in the previous post we have a healthy budget but I have still had to stretch it to its limits with installments etc. to bring in quality across the pitch.

And I'm extremely happy with the results....



CONTRACT RENEWALS

No new contracts have been given to the existing group despite a number of players getting wound up by this.

I stood firm as the wage increases some of them were asking for were ridiculous. For example, Nathan Sheron is a good player and did brilliantly for us in the Championship but his request for his £2,800 p/w wages to be increased to £18,000 per week is nonsense.

Lots of the team have benefited from a 50% promotion clause but this didn't impact our budgets too much. I have stood firm and none of the existing team's wages exceed £10k p/w, even after the 50% bonuses. The highest paid of this bunch is Diego Batista, who after the increase now picks up £10k p/w.

We extended one player's loan for another year - and that man was our right winger speedster Stewart Riley. Wolves have kindly allowed him to stay here and we continue not to pay his salary despite our affiliation terminating after reach the same division.



DEPARTURES

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Not many outgoings and not really anyone that we will miss.

I no longer needed Akin Famewo and we make a healthy profit of nearly a million on him in a year. Yannick Toure was mouthing off about a new deal and after various Swiss teams showed an interest I agreed to let him on for over 10 times the figure we paid for him a year ago. Adam Roberts will get some experience in L2 with AFC Fylde. Vidal retires to pursue a management role and Zach Dronfield never looked capable of playing above L2 level so we release him.




NEW SIGNINGS

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Perhaps the final pre-season that will see such a big turnover of players as we don't need to go up any more divisions.

I tried my best not to overspend on any one player and to spread our budget across the pitch, as I felt we were over-performing with our squad in the Championship and desperately needed to add quality to give us a chance in the Premier League!

I missed out on a fair few really good players because of work permit issues - including an amazing Belarusian attacking midfielder playing for BATE who is Belarus' best player! He would have only cost us £425k and could have been sold on for £50m+ he is that good! :mad:

I have used installments to pay for most players so I imagine that will impact on our budget next year and I have gambled on very low relegation release clauses for most new players - so if we go back down we are screwed! :LOL:

Here are the 13 new faces (excluding Benes from the last post):



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Big cheques for the Czechs! Our new £9m club record signing is only at the tender age of 19 so it is a big risk placing faith in him to be our new 1st choice striker, but we know that we have the experienced and reliable Clarke-Harris to provide backup. I think Petr Koci has the potential to be top class and he is a very intelligent and technical striker. His PPT of 'looks for pass rather than attempting to score' is slightly worrying for a striker though...


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Our other big money new boy hailing from Prague is Jaromir Hajek (who looks nearly identical to Koci!). Jaromir is described by the media as a wonderkid and he has some amazing mental stats at 19 y/o: anticipation -15, decisions -17, vision 15. I will look to him to pull the strings in midfield. When Petr Svejnoha arrives next year we will have a trio of Czech wonderkids with Koci, Hajek and Svejnoha!


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I feel I may have somewhat overspent on Oumar Solet and I feel slightly bad as he is quite similar to Nathan Sheron. But he is a good ball playing CB who can do a job in CM when needed, and has room to grow further.


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Curtis Jones is a total bargain at £5.25m! He has spent the past 4 years smashing it in the MLS for DC United and I was very pleased to snag him. We had been lacking an effective creative player on the left wing and he can be that for us, and will probably start most games.


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What a find Jamie Horne is from the SPL! He had been playing brilliantly for Hearts, the club where he started from, and we felt that we needed to offer him his big break in the EPL. Again at £5.25m he is a bargain, and can improve a lot. What a moustache too, btw!


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I can't say that I had known of Yann Gboho but he is a very solid midfielder that can play in CM or as a n.10. I think we got him at a reasonable price and a low salary.


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I got around the work permit issue here as Cristian Gascon is part Spanish as well as Argentinian. For just £3.5m he will provide cover at right back for years to come.


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Jay Dasilva is our new 1st choice left back, coming in for a bargain £2.8m after being transfer listed by Burnley. He looks well suited for being our advanced full back on the left, but I am concerned that he is only 5'4 tall as a defender...


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The third former Benfica B player now to have played for Blyth (+Batista & Gouveia), Gerson Sousa comes in on the cheap and on very low wages and will play as a backup and hopefully can improve during his time here too.


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What a bargain! Pawel Bochniewicz (easy for you to say) is a no frills defender but is very good for the £1.1m we paid Lechia Gdansk for him. His early season performances have tipped him for his first Poland international cap!


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I have signed Ricardo Colombini on loan from Juventus until the end of the season with the mandatory future fee of £3.6m at the end of it. He is Argentinian/Italian so no work permit needed and he looks a real handful. Should give real competition to Stewart Riley and Curtis Jones for starting spots on the wings.


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I think technically Nedeljko Djergovic is the best player in our squad! PSG hoovered him up from BSC Young Boys in Switzerland and we have managed to land him on loan in little old Blyth! I didn't think Ronan Darcy was good enough to start regulalry in the Premier League and Denis McCarthy wasn't ready yet - but Djergovic is certainly more than capable of dominating in the n.10 position!


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Finally we have brought in Ki-Jana Hoever from Liverpool to play as our more defensive full back on the right hand side. He will probably start most games but has competition from Cristian Gascon so will need to play well. Having said that, he looks very good!



PRE-SEASON FIXTURES

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For no real reason I decided to play a pre-season exclusively against fellow clubs that play in green. And we did pretty well! Lots of confidence going into the new season in football's richest league.

I hope that most of the new players brought in will turn out to be successful and I'm confident they will. Crucially most of them were between 19-24 so even if they struggle I'm sure we could turn a profit on them. And if they succeed, we either keep the good players or accept some monster bids further down the line!

Let's go Spartans! - And I will keep the sign off as "Blyth-on-Trent" until the board move us back home to Northumberland and Blyth :LOL:



Howay Blyth-on-Trent!
 
First Quarter of the 24/25: First Ever Season in the Premier League


Apologies for such a long delay since the last update - life getting busier and stuff!

Very excited to bring you the first quarter of Blyth Spartan's first ever season in the Premier League. It took us remarkably only 5 seasons to get here and I'm thinking that I will play 5 more seasons in total. Hopefully we can challenge for the title towards the end of that period!


SQUAD AND TACTICS UPDATE

The below team has emerged as our strongest players after the opening 9 or 10 games. I still need to develop a more defensive minded, counter-attacking formation for away fixtures or home against top sides but for now I'm enjoying watching this creative team express themselves and surprise the opposition and pundits - just as they have for 5 years now!

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Ideal Starting XI: Caoimhin Kelleher; Jay Dasilva, Pawel Bochniewicz, Jamie Horne, Ki-Jana Hoever; Jaromir Hajek, Diego Batista, Curtis Jones, Nedeljko Djergovic, Stewart Riley; Petr Koci.

Ideal Bench: Cristian Gascon, Tom Pearce, Yann Gboho, Denis McCarthy, Gerson Sousa, Ricardo Colombini, Jonson Clarke-Harris.

Other Squad Players: Owen Evans, Nathan Sheron, Kory Roberts, Oumar Solet, Harry Toffolo, Emil Bergvall, Ronan Darcy, Paul Kenny, Bez Lubala, Andy Burnett, Tomos Morgan, Milan Benes.



FINANCIAL COMPARISONS

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Given our relatively limited £375k weekly salary budget - which is 15.6% of the average Premier League sides weekly budget and 6.8% of Manchester United's - I'm very happy with the squad that I have assembled!


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And this one speaks for itself - our commercial activities make FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT times less revenue than Manchester United :LOL:



AUGUST

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Wow! A historic first month comes with two groundbreaking and historic victories for the Spartans!


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We manage to convincingly beat local giants from down the road Newcastle United thanks to an inspired game from our new young Czech prodigy Petr Koci! The Magpies fans will have been observing our rise for the past 5 years but surely will still have been shell-shocked to be taken apart at St. James like this.

Perhaps even more impressive was beating one of the world's biggest clubs, as a late winner from Spartans favourite Jonson Clarke-Harris was enough to defeat the great Manchester United. A moment JCH will never forget, nor the Spartans faithful dutifully following in the Port Vale stadium (lol).

We also managed to beat fellow promotees Southampton as well as Everton in what was a very difficult second round draw in the Carabao Cup. Unfortunately we lost from a losing position at the Molyneux against Wolves.

POTM goes to our brilliant new Polish centre back Pawel Bochniewicz. Boch has been an inspired signing for just £1.1M from Lechia Gdansk and has earned a first ever call up to his national team thanks to his excellent defending, conceding just 4 goals all month.

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PLAYER OF THE MONTH -
Pawel Bochniewicz




SEPTEMBER

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I knew that we had had a really special month in August and that things wouldn't last so September is no disaster.

We both scored a late equaliser against Huddersfield and conceded one to Sheffield United. Leicester dumped us out of the Carabao Cup in only the 3rd round - but come on Everton and Leicester both away in the first two rounds, could we get worse luck in the draws?? The team put up a good fight against a Chelsea team featuring Haaland, Sancho, Vinicius Jr and Foden, but couldn't quite make anything from the game.

POTM goes to new French midfielder Yann Gboho who took his opportunities in the team this month very well, picking up a few assists. It is a good battle between Gboho and Diego Batista in the middle at the month for a starting spot!

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PLAYER OF THE MONTH -
Yann Gboho



OCTOBER

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Unfortunately our number one keeper Caoimhin Kelleher picked up a bad injury and is out for 2 months. He missed both the Tottenham game and the Leicester game, however backup Owen Evans - who has never played regularly past League One - filled in reasonably. I'm probably going to have to bring in another keeper in January!



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Only three games played in August thanks to losing in the Carabao and due to the international break... and yeah we picked up just one point.

A really poor performance away at Everton was annoying as we won at Goodison only two month prior. The Tottenham game was heartbreaking as we led them in the match 3 times! Petr Koci has made a good start to life in the Premier League for a 19 y/o and now has 5 league goals, which I'm happy with. If things drop off, then we still have super JCH in the wings!

POTM goes to our Wolves wideman loanee Stewart Riley, who continues to improve. His dribbling and raw pace causes a problem for everyone who faces him and a couple of goals this month shows an improvement in end product.

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PLAYER OF THE MONTH -
Stewart Riley



LEAGUE TABLE

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I forgot to screenshot the table after the final month ending, so this comes one game into November - and it was a truly shocking result!!

A bright start has put hope in the Spartan fans, and to be fair 12 points is decent and takes us closer to that golden 40 point mark.

Oh, and spare a thought for Tottenham, who are in the relegation zone!


Howay Blyth-on-Trent!
 
12th after 11 games is more than decent. Great start to the season and good job you got those early wins. Hopefully change of form is just round the corner
 
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