Giving them the once-over

Life sometimes interferes with plans, especially when it comes to FM plans. As such I've not had time to crack on with Blyth. Which is unfortunate. A brand new idea to blog, and then stalling. Less than ideal, but I will get there. At some point. There's no hurry, eh?

In the meantime though I did get the change to load the game and have a quick look around. I wanted to familiarise myself with the squad - what I've got, what I haven't, strengths and weakness. That sort of thing. At least if I have that initial set of ideas it might help me once I am ready to click than 'continue' button.

I thought it probably makes sense to start with all the new Dynamics stuff, given it is something I've not seen before. Let's see what I can discern...

So starting with the team hierarchy, I have three team leaders, four highly influential players and another three who are influential. Now I'm not yet sure what's normal, but this feels like quite a high proportion of influence to deal with. It might mean disharmony spreads easily. And in fact, looking at my assistant manager's feedback the main negative is alongt the lines of have too many leaders, with advice to cut back on that number to "help prevent disputees between them." OK, so question one, how the crap do I get rid of a team leader without him causing disharmony? Tricky.

Next we come to social groups, and how that hierarchy above is split between cliques, I guess. Although Dazza, my assistant manager, gives me green feedback that all social groups are content, that secondary group A looks like it might be a worry - full of influential folk in there. They might need some careful handling. I feel sorry for Buddle and Atkinson down there at the bottom though. Bless 'em. Sat at the side of the room. No ride-sharing to training for those two. Let's hope they're not important or anything.

OK, so I haven't totally decided whether to go 4-2-1-2-1 or 4-1-2-2-1, but for the purposes of this next bit, it doesn't really matter all that much. Around the edges everything else is the same, the detail just comes down to whether I used a Carrilero or a Segundo Volante. And it doesn't change my conclusions.

My conclusions are that I don't have a decent striker (at least in terms of a COmplete Forward role). Having said that, I need to investigate a bit deeper. I've seen evidence from others that Dan Maguire can be a goal-scoring beast. Perhaps he's better suited in another role? As I say, something to investigate.

It looks like I have two decent players for that left inside forward role, which is nice. They both can play the role on the right too, albeit not as well. But definitely not one of my highest priorities.

In centre-mid Horner is the stand-out but I lack much depth behind him.

And then we come to the issues. So David Atkinson, identified above as being one of my two billy-no-mates, is awesome it appears. What is not so good is that he is awesome as DM, at DC and at right back. And it doesn't matter how awesome he is, he can't play four positions at once. I need to add multiple DCs, DRs and a DM to the shopping list.

At left back, Liddle looks like he can do a job. I had him at Cleethorpes in my FM16 save actually. Always nice to see a friendly face.

And then my keeper. I need one of those too.

So, my inital shopping list looks like this: GK, DC, DC, DR, DM, MC, MC, AMR, STK. That's nine players, but with some unmentioned tat to move on. Doable? I would hope so. But perhaps this isn't a one season quick promotion job.

Finally we come to the overview team report. Perhaps I should have started here, but nevertheless it gives me some decent pointers beyond what I have already learned.:

• David Atkinson is a star at right back, at centre-back and in defensive midfield. Yes, thankyou. I am on top of that.
• Dylan McGlade is the best option on both the right and left wings. Check.
• The squad had a number of impressive decision-makers. Well that's news, but good news.
• And our coaching team is one of the best in the division. That's definitely a nice surprise, but I need to check how much of that is down to be dragging the average up.

So that's the plus points (well apart from lack of depth masquerading as overlapping player strengths), but there are plenty of negatives too:

• Lack of depth at DM, beyond first team, and in goal. Yes, lack of depth is a recurring theme.
• No youth prospects.
• Poor work rate, physicality, teamwork, first touch, passing, jumping, aggression and commitment.
• A "leadership void". Hang on just a moment though. How does this leadership void equate with what we learned before about me having too many leaders, according to the dynamics hierarchy thing. Inconsistent much?

In fact, the negatives are more troubling than the positives are helpful, I think.

Initial impressions - bugger.

Who are ya?

It's only a couple of days before the launch of FM18 now and I suddenly realised that I really didn't know much about the team where I intend to be spending my managerial time. I am guessing most of you have no idea about them either. I figured that it might be worth doing a little background research and shedding some light on what I'll be getting myself into. Adding a little colour to the appointment, if you will. Thank goodness for the internet!

So Blyth is located in the north-east of England, in Northumbria, on the coast and north of Newcastle. It bears a remarkable resemblance to my home town actually - a coastal town with a port previously reliant on the fishing industry. Albeit with funnier accents. It's smaller than Grimsby with a population of just less than 40,000. 'Notable Blyth people' include Mark Knopfler. He wasn't born there, but grew up there. I guess, when you're Blyth, you claim anyone you can.

Moving on the club itself, as mentioned before, they play in the National League North, level 6 of the English pyramid. They only got promoted last year so it may be that this first year could be a bit of a struggle as the players attempt to acclimatise. If I fail, I can blame the players. They've been in this division before having spent six consecutive seasons this millenium up here. They were relegated five years ago, in 2011-12, but are back in the big time!

The club has a history, which is nice, having been formed in 1899. The highlight of the last 118 years was an FA Cup run in 1977-78 that saw them eventually fall to Wrexham in the 5th round. It took a reply too. The Spartans have reached the 3rd round on three other occasions aswell.  I aim to draw on that cup pedigree to bring in some invaluable funds.

Blyth play their home games at Croft Park, with a capacity of 4,435. Checking t'internet, it seems that this season so far the average home attendance is a smidge over 900 so I probably can afford two or even three promotions before my board will need to start thinking about renovations. That 900 figure is well up from the 650 or so that witnessed last year's promotion. On the flip-side, I am not going to rake in the gate receipts so selling my best players and replacing them cheaply is going to be the recipe for success, I'd say. Croft Park certainly looks like a typical non-league ground with mismatched stands and plenty of character.

I couldn't find any famous players 'once of Blyth' so I'll move on to talk about the team's kit. Blyth's kit is green. Green and white stripes actually. Their team photo looks like a packet of Pacers. Green's not a bad thing, I guess. The team I last played for myself, the season before I finally hung up my boots wore green so that's a nice connection. It does seem weird that a coastal town so previously reliant on the fishing industry would have a green kit though. A readily-accepted bit of knowledge among Grimsby Town fans is that our keeper typically never wears a green jersey because it is supposedly bad luck to wear green on a trawler. Now that little fact-ette surely isn't limited to our wee neck of the north-east coast of England, is it? In which case, how to Blyth justify a whole team of green and the resultant waterfall of bad luck? Maybe they're not so superstitious up there or something.

And finally, perhaps my favourite bit of Blyth trivia - they were, once upon a time' sponsored by Viz. I know. Brilliant, right? They even had the Geordie comic's name emblazoned on the team shirt, as this photo from the 1993-94 season shows. According to the Blyth Spirit blog (from where I nicked that photo) "Viz had wanted ‘Drink Beer – Smoke Tabs’ to be the slogan on the shirts but no surprisingly the FA turned down that slogan". That would have been too brilliant for words.

Thinking tactics

I've decided not to play the FM18 Beta, but rather I intend to wait for the full game. It's not that long away now. (I, of course, retain the right to change my mind!) I was going to install the Beta and take a little time examining the Blyth squad I will be inheriting, but then I figured that the final stats in the full game might be different so it might prove a waste of time. So intead, my mind has turned to tactics.

In my (simplistic) mind, there are two ways to view tactics and your team. You either shape your tactics around your squad. Or, alternatively, you shape your squad around your tactics. Historically I've always tended towards the latter. There may be tweaking as I go, but pretty much I tend to decide on a formation for my team at the start of a season and then bring in players to fill the slots. It might not be ideal, and it does tend to lead to large player turn-over each summer, especially at the beginning of a save, but it is the way I play.

With FM, of course, we then have roles within positions and FM18 adds four new ones to the ever-expanding list. I might tweak those as I go, or play with player duties, but for the mostpart, I stick with a formation for a season. I like to have a happy squad (don't we all?) and the idea, for example, of bringing in a DM to cover that slot when we only play with a formation containing a DM one in every five or six games seems a recipe for disharmony to me. Better to have one 'general' formation that I tweak, than two or three very different ones that require different players.

As a Grimsby Town fan I have inherited a love of 4-4-2. Our most successful years were achieved with this most basic of formations. Two up top, two flying wingers, a battler alongside a creator in the middle and a flat back four keeping it tight. No messing. In FM, however, I struggle with the idea of playing AML/R players in the ML/R slots. Philosophically it seems wrong to me. I just can't do it. Therefore I can't bring myself to play 4-4-2.

Having said that, I did play it for a few seasons in my Cleethorpes save on FM16. Ish. It was sort of a doctored 4-4-2. It was my starting formation, in fact. Looking at formation 1 below (which looks like a number 2, I just realised!), you can see what I did. I dropped one of the CMs back to a DM to provide a bit of assymetrical cover for the top-heavy formation. The formation worked for me as I had superior players. I don't know if it would have worked otherwise.

As if to prove that point, as I moved up the leagues it became less effective. There seemed to be a disconnect between my forwards and my midfield. To try to deal with that I pulled one of my strikers back to become an AMC, while playing with two CMs as in formation 2 above. Again, decent scouting meant players playing well below their actual level and I muscled through my promotions. So many goals were scored by one winger crossing to the other to tap in at the far post. My two wingers often outscored my targetman.

A few years later I stumbled across the Strikerless website. As the name suggests it is predominantly focussed on formations that play without a striker. And yet they seemed to work, for Guido at least. I was intrigued and decided to give it a go. I binned all my strikers and wingers one summer, invested funds in AMCs and held my breath. Formation 3 was the formation I purloined. I have to say, it was successful and some of the football my team played was beautiful. I won promotions and cups. But something was missing. Philosophy hit hard. I missed my wingers and playing without a striker was a struggle for me. I was a striker when I played. I couldn't condone abandoning my fellow goal-getters!

By now, Cleethorpes Town were in the Premiership and I could pick up some real quality players. I reverted to widemen and one up top, as in formation 4. Instead of the AMC we'd had in formation 2 I dropped him back to the DMC slot. I decide to branch out a little though, the AML/R became Raumdeuters while the DMC was a Regista. Something a little different. A little continental. And it brought some success, Champions League football and a loss in the 2026/27 CL final (3-2 to Benfica, the buggers!). The football was nice too. But after three seasons, and getting ready for FM18, I fancy a change.

Now I've always been intrigued by the Libero role. The idea of some Beckenbauer type mopping up at the back before striding forward with the ball, releasing someone wide on the wing and then arriving late into the box to slot home. What's not to love? I really want to get a formation like that working. As mentioned before, my indoctrination with 4-4-2 means I am predisposed to two up top. Not wanting to leave the middle empty means a three-man midfield, each with different duties to give me some depth and then the width will come from my fullbacks. Formation 6 is what I have dreamed up. This is what I need to get to work. I toyed with WBs rather than FBs, but I hate the idea of opposition wingers getting down the sides and behind my team so I maintain the flat back four with the libero behind.

"But wait!" I can hear you cry. "You're going to be playing with Blyth in the National League North, right? You might struggle a little to find the definitive Beckenbauer". Don't worry, my friends. I am hearing you. I am going to have to abandon the Libero-experiment until later in my save, I think. I understand I might have been asking too much of players at level 6.

And that's where formation 5 above comes in. It takes my successful formation 4, keeps it 4-3-3-ish, but then removes the complications of Raumdeuters and Registas. Simplification is the name of the game with an Anchorman, two CMs, IFs cutting in to hit the channels and fullbacks overlapping outside. And that's where I intend to start in FM18.

However, having said all of that however, perhaps a Mezzala - Carrilero partnership might dominate the middle of Croft Park. Something to dwell on, I think. 10th November isn't too long away...

#howayblyth

The decision of where to manage in a new iteration of Football Manager is always a tricky decision. Previously I have tended to default to my home-town team, Grimsby Town, but as mentioned previously I do like a good LLM challenge. Sure the Mariners are in League Two, but is that really LLM? Not for me. Three promotions would see me in the Premiership. Where's the challenge in that? 😉

No, true LLM, for me, begins in non-league. The lower the better. I talked last time about my time in FM16 at Cleethorpes Town. Level 9 through to level 1 and a Champions League final (yet to be played, so still potential winners!). That's the LLM I am talking about. As far as I know, the standard FM18 database will follow the usual trend and go down to level 6 in England - the National League North & South. So I had two leagues to choose from.

I've always had a soft spot for Dulwich Halmet. I lived in Camberwell in south London for a few years in the late 90s and their Champion Hill ground was only a mile and half down the road. I never actually managed to make a game, mind, but the option was always there, y'know. They were my 'local' team. Imagine how disappointed I was when I realised they're in the Isthmian League Premier Division, or level 7 of the pyramid. Ooh, so close! #pinkandbluearmy.

After that little misfire I decided it would be prudent to actually look at the contents of the National League North & South rather than just pluck teams out of a hat and then check what league they play in. That little bit of research followed and I narrowed my potential selection down to six teams - five in the North and one in the South:
- FC United
- Salford City
- Gainsborough Trinity
- North Ferriby United
- Blyth Spartans
- Truro City

The first two I can blame on my dad. He's from Manchester, the red side not the blue, and the connections to those first two clubs are obvious. The next two are due to my love of Grimsby Town. Being relatively local, quite often released Mariners or young Town players seeking football on loan would end up at either of those two clubs. I figured if I wasn't going to manage Grimsby directly I could at least manage players with a Grimsby connection. My final two choices are a bit more random. Blyth I chose because a friend of a friend supports them, follows them around the country and has a lot of fun. Truro was more random still. I have no connection to Truro. I have no connection to Cornwall. I've never even been further south in England than the Isle of Wight. I just fancied making all those opposition teams endure endless coach trips down the A30.

I decided that the two north-west teams were too 'trendy' so ruled them out, and the two 'local' teams seemed too similar to my Cleethorpes team to make it interesting. I had spent six or seven of my 12 seasons in that save playing at The Circle in Hull while my ground was upgraded. I really didn't want to have history repeat itself in that way. So that left two. Blyth and Truro. The Spartans and the White Tigers. I couldn't have picked two more geographically opposed teams if I'd tried.

In the end it came down to connections. Having a remote, distant emotional connection to Blyth won the day. I will be homed up in the far north-east for FM18. And anyway, who wouldn't want to manage a club called the Spartans?

Allow me introduce myself

I've been playing about with Football Manager and, before that, Championship Manager since the mid-90s. I think Championship Manager 2 was probably the first version I played. I installed it on my PC at work and spent every lunchtime on it, day after day, week after week. I remember managing my beloved Grimsby Town (of course), Sheffield United and exploring the lower reaches of the Italian leagues. I recently spent far too long scouring the Serie C1 league tables from that time to try to remember who I managed but I think that nugget of information might be lost now to the mists of time. All the names seem familiar, but that's to be expected when you spend hours examining the weaknesses of your opponents, I guess.

The early 2000s were dominated by Championship Manager. Most iterations of the game saw two saves. I'd start with Grimsby Town. It was hard not to. But then the second half of the year would see me finding a team in the lower reaches of the English division to raise to glory. For me there really is nothing like promotion through the divisions. I branched out one year and toyed with Belgium for a little while. Or maybe it was the Netherlands. There might have been a Scottish adventure in there too along the way. Who can remember?

One save that particularly sticks with me (CM4 perhaps) was taking Leyton Orient to the Premier League and Europe. I don't think I ever won the league but I got close. I vividly remember being sacked with the team in 4th or 5th. I'd had taken them from the fourth division to the heights of the English game. The board's expectations had outgrown their finances though and I was blamed. I don't think I've ever forgiven Orient for that. It's strange how our virtual experiences can tar our real life opinions, eh?

I made the move with Sports Interactive from CM to FM but after a couple of seasons life got in the way. I still bought the game each year (me? addicted? never!) but time in the game was significantly reduced. After some 'time off' I experimented with FM09, FM12, FM13, FM14 but only logged a combined three hours playing time in this period. According to my Steam log I bought and installed FM15 too but never even played it!

FM16 was where the bug re-bit me however. I wanted a change. Something different. I discovered custom databases and this was the hook that snagged me. As I have already mentioned I love a bit of LLM (kinda necessary when you're a Grimsby Town fan!) and the idea of loading leagues down to the 10th or 11th level was intriguing. Added to that was the attraction that I could take another of my local teams from my home-town and pilot them through the stormy waters of lower league anonymity to European predominance. I tossed up between Grimsby Borough and Cleethorpes Town and coin fell on the side of the Owls over the Wilderness Boys. I can't remember why, but anyhow Cleethorpes Town. Northern Counties East League Premier Division. Level 9 of the English football pyramid.

12 seasons later, Cleethorpes Town are in the Premiership. I finished in mid-table in 2024/25, cracked the top four in 2025/26 and am currently nearing the end of 2026/27. With one league game left I am locked in for fifth but I have two games left. My final game of the season, and probably my final game of FM17 I suppose, is the Champions League final. I can't remember where I am playing. I can't even remember who I am playing. It doesn't really matter. Win or lose I can resign from Cleethorpes Town with my head held high.

And then, on to FM18!