With his Blyth Spartans side relegated from the Blue Square North on Saturday manager Tommy Cassidy was thinking of recharging his batteries, and of positives and negatives.
“I’m looking forward to the summer holidays and to the new season,“ he said. Don’t think though that I’ll be relaxing because the hard work starts then, actually before that – now! I’ve had a word with the current players and they know that they are under the microscope till the end of the season. I will be looking to improve the squad and I’ll be looking predominantly for players from a higher level. Signing the majority of players from a lower level doesn’t work.”
Cassidy thought that Blyth’s battle against relegation since he took over in the New Year was always going to be difficult. “Realistically it was too late to turn things around. However we should have had more points from several games in that period, and we did have a wee run, but unfortunately we weren’t good enough. The fact that we did play well at times is a positive but the negative is that we didn’t accumulate the necessary points!
“I’m disappointed but not down,” he added.
Life in the Evo-stick League Northern Premier Division awaits the Spartans and Cassidy is optimistic that a good start will have the fans returning to Croft Park in their numbers.
“I believe that if we can get into the top three or four we will have crowds of around six or seven hundred coming to watch us. When I was playing for Newcastle we were on getting 20,000 or so at St. James’ but after we’d been relegated to the old Division 2, and were doing well, we were attracting over 35,000!” he said. “Mind you it won’t be easy but supporters can rest assured I’ll be doing my best to bring success to the club.”