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.