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.