Re: The Steve Bruce thread

[Boldfinger]

Did he really have a 5 year deal or was it a recurring 1 year deal for 5 years - if you know what I mean.
You'd think any contract would have a maximum pay off clause inserted somewhere.

[AstonThriller]

Lose Saturday and he has to go.
Nice big payoff for the remainder of his 5 yr deal.
Coming to a golf course near you very soon.

He's on a rolling contract Narla, not a five year deal.

[deadbuzzardalive]

It was a one year rolling contract, so at any one time he's always got a year left to run on his contract, which was explained by Wyness in one of his interviews. If we fire him, we owe him a year's salary.

[Villa_Dan]

The injuries to Jedinak and Kodjia are not an excuse because we went into fucking summer with them injured!

Fuck the fat gobshite off now. I'm done with him completely.

[NARLA24]

Cheers fellas

[Guest]

Have you read this: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2011/nov/30/steve-bruce-sunderland-sacked

Shortly after taking charge at Sunderland Steve Bruce was asked if he had considered experimenting with a Christmas Tree formation. "I'm not really into tactics," he replied. At the time that response was easy to interpret as a deliberately flippant or, perhaps, a self-deprecating means of avoiding answering the question. As the seasons passed, though, the suspicion grew that the former Manchester United captain had simply been honest.

Arguably one of the principal reasons Bruce is no longer in charge at the Stadium of Light concerns his apparent inability to tweak formations or tactics during matches. Whenever a rival manager re-configured his system mid-game, Bruce invariably failed to come up with a countermeasure.

In recent months Alan Pardew, Mark Hughes, Roy Hodgson and, most recently, Roberto Martínez have all seemingly out-thought him as Sunderland dropped points against supposedly weaker sidesthey really should have beaten.

If he failed to cut it as a tactician, the 50-year-old did not seem much of a strategist either. Including loans, 30 players were signed – several of whom have subsequently been moved on – during Bruce's two-and-a-half years on Wearside. That represents an unsettling "churn" factor and hardly proved conducive to developing either a clear playing philosophy or strong team spirit.

Always rather amorphous, if not downright scrappy, Sunderland's high-tempo style lacked creativity, not to mention control, in central midfield. Unable to dictate play, the team frequently failed to press home early advantages.

In many ways Bruce's decision to make the hot-headed, yellow card-prone Lee Cattermole his captain proved emblematic of a rather gung-ho reign during which players such as David Meyler were rushed back from serious injuries only to suffer further complications, the idea of hiring a sports psychologist was dismissed and the manager boasted about his inability to send an email. While Bruce – who did finally learn how to log on last summer when the club issued him with an iPad – may well argue this lack of computer literacy was hardly relevant, many of his peers spend countless hours checking out the latest sports science innovations, researching transfer targets and analysing Prozone statistics on their increasingly indispensable laptops.

Unashamedly old school, Bruce believed that motivation was the key to management but the influx of overseas coaches has raised the Premier League's technical bar and despite his relative youth, he has begun to look suspiciously like a man whose era has passed.

Unlike many modern managers he did not coach the team himself, delegating that job to his assistant, Eric Black. While Bruce's undoubtedly engaging, humour-suffused, personality had a broad appeal, he fell out with quite a few players, most notably Kenwyne Jones, now at Stoke, and Anton Ferdinand, now at QPR and who had by common consensus finally emerged as Sunderland's outstanding defender when he was sold in August.

Shortly afterwards Sunderland's manager was badly let down by Titus Bramble, who faces a crown court trial on sexual assault charges in January. Other bad buys included Matthew Kilgallon, Christian Riveros, Marcos Angeleri and Paulo Da Silva. Meanwhile Craig Gardner, bought from Birmingham for £6m, has barely figured in the first team.

There were some good purchases along the way, too, such as Lorik Cana, Asamoah Gyan and, above all, Darren Bent . Unfortunately Bent had become desperate to leave Sunderland six months before his eventual move to Aston Villa in January. Cana headed to Turkey after just a year while Gyan has newly gone to United Arab Emirates on loan. Money evidently played a big part in all these deals, but it does not represent the entire behind-the-scenes story.

Something was clearly wrong because, as last season's promising beginning subsided into a post-new year collapse, managerial excuses increasingly became a recurring, if self-destructive, theme.

It certainly did not play well with Sunderland fans when the crowd were blamed for harbouring overly "great expectations" or that Bruce constantly bemoaned the difficulty of attracting players to the north-east. More recently, his loudest lament has been that locals would not accept him purely because he had been born north of the Tyne and grew up supporting Newcastle United.

Granted, a minority shamefully hurled chants of "You fat Geordie bastard – get out of our club" after Saturday's defeat to Wigan, but the overwhelming majority of supporters did not care about his roots. Moreover their "expectations" were mostly pretty modest.

Two home wins since New Year's Day have tried Wearsiders' patience but, contrary to Bruce's theories, many would have taken the odd defeat to Newcastle in their stride had there been signs of progress or a discernible playing pattern emerging. Maybe the core problem was that Bruce never accepted that, sometimes, the devil really is in the detail. Soon after Ahmed Elmohamady arrived from Egypt, Sunderland's manager was asked if the winger would be observing Ramadan and if so, how the daylight fasting might affect his game.

The question was met with a blank look. "Is Elmohamady a Coptic Christian rather than a Muslim then?" the questioner persisted. It was an important distinction and the answer should have tripped off Bruce's tongue, but he clearly did not have a clue.

Sounds familiar? Obviously the second underlined bit isn't familiar, but how anyone can delegate coaching to Eric Black I'll never know.

[achilles]

As people have already said the absence of Kodija and Jedinak is just a smokescreen to hide the ineptitude of Bruce and his coaching staff.
Let us say that Jedinak was fit, Bruce would play him and Whelan, that really would be a dynamic midfield...NOT!
It would just be more negative crap to stop the opposition from scoring, sod us getting over the halfway line.
When Kodija comes back it is going to be far too late anyway but it wasn't as though Bruce didn't know that Kodija wasn't going to be fit for the beginning of the season, he had a fractured ankle for f**k sake!

Bruce is getting desperate as he has no idea how to get out of this mess he is creating so he is grasping at straws!

[Trotters]

.... I still say a winning mentality is a winning mentality whatever the level. People only get hung up on the minutiae of losing when losses continue, but I swear a lot of the problem is attitude, belief and the desire to give everything...

My eldest lad's team has gone unbeaten all season and wrapped the title up with 5 games to spare. He and one of the other better kids were invited up to play Super Youth League for a game - a team that had won only 2 of their 12 matches.

5 minutes into the 2nd half and the opposition made it 2-0. The two lads went on and all around them were nothing but dropped heads. It really was something to see! But my boy and his mate had that winning mentality and properly had the side revved up in minutes. The game ended 2-0 but the attitude shown but the boys with the winning-mentality turned the game from a one-sided affair into something that really could have gone either way.

At Villa though, I'm sure it's more than just a losing mentality. There's something utterly rotten in the club and maybe it's the shame of such a giant losing its way, maybe it's the pure pressure of expectation. I don't know...but it's more than just Bruce (even though right now he's the biggest issue).

[achilles]

@Joppe84 that is deja vu

[Dions_Bald_Head]

Good spot @Joppe84. Nullifies all criticism about Bruce's tactics - like trying to argue with an extremist.

Just hope the Villa board have seen it.

[Dazzle]

It's been an horrendous start, there's no way the board would have been contemplating 1pt from the opening 3 fixtures. Let's face it, apart from the new manager bounce we had for a month or two the rest has been pretty dismal, lower mid table stuff. The board have the wrong man for the wrong time. We need a younger hands on coach type manager who takes control of all playing matters and works with the technical director with regard to transfer policy. Had we have gotten Wagner last year when RDM was sacked then we would have made the playoffs. I really hope Round has been tasked directly by Xia to pinpoint that next younger coach in the mould of a klopp/Wagner and get him in ready for the international break.

[De Kuip]

Bloody hell Joppe, if that article had been written yesterday but substitute Villa for Sunderland, and the West Mids for the North East, I'd have said is was a superbly accurate description of the last 308 days.

The fact that it's about his previous tenure at Sunderland makes the mirror image all the more shocking.

[DelboyVilla]

It's been an horrendous start, there's no way the board would have been contemplating 1pt from the opening 3 fixtures. Let's face it, apart from the new manager bounce we had for a month or two the rest has been pretty dismal, lower mid table stuff. The board have the wrong man for the wrong time. We need a younger hands on coach type manager who takes control of all playing matters and works with the technical director with regard to transfer policy. Had we have gotten Wagner last year when RDM was sacked then we would have made the playoffs. I really hope Round has been tasked directly by Xia to pinpoint that next younger coach in the mould of a klopp/Wagner and get him in ready for the international break.

The trouble is as I seem to remember from when Round discussed the Bruce appointment, doesn't he use a bunch of statisticians to carry out analysis of results etc which does not obviously pay any heed to style or coaching philosophy. You cannot make a decision based on numbers alone.

I have seen that Sunderland report before, probably when Bruce was appointed. I was wrong and I thought SB was the outstanding candidate. Even after reading that article. I dismissed it as a one off. I think what it is Bruce is a small town, small minded, zero expectations club manager. As soon as he arrives at a big club he loses the plot! However I realized my mistake and wanted him gone in May but the nay sayers quoted stability which is poppy cock!

Watford change managers more than the kit, Southampton do, Real Madrid do, Chelsea do. The club is bigger than anyone man and so long as there is a plan losing a manager will never be a problem.

Herein lies the problem, we have no plan. Wyness is a dinosaur. He is good with the purse strings but when it comes to forward thinking he is in the dark ages! A new enlightened Board member would be a real start!

[De Kuip]

Interesting set of comments from Yesterday's Guardian report on Villa v Reading. I particularly noted the ones about Calderwood (and the thread starts off with a great rant from a poster):

Bruce should have been sacked in May. He's tactically clueless, unable to motivate his players and has failed to instil any semblance of a style of play. He's wasted millions on players that he has no idea how to use. He spent the summer courting John Terry, who's not only a loathsome twat but a twat who plays in the one position that didn't need attention, and in doing so he's stripped Chester of the captaincy which has affected his form, weakening our defence - so he's somehow managed to spend millions in the summer to make us worse. He's allowed arseholes like Agbonlahor and Richards back into the fold, which is a kick in the teeth to the fans who watched them strolling their way through our relegation season without a care in the world, and he's said that Alan Hutton "picks himself". Alan Fucking Hutton. The football is shit, the results are shit, Bruce has got more chance of winning a modelling contract than he has of leading Villa to promotion this season. He is a footballing dinosaur, I don't care what he's done in the past, he clearly, evidently, demonstrably can't do it any more. Worse still he's delusional, he's adopted Paul Bullshit Lambert's habit of treating the fans like fucking idiots with post-match comments that bear no resemblance to the match that we all just saw. We didn't deserve to lose to Reading, Steve? We fucking did, you pillock. We were shite, as we always are. We set out not to lose (not to win, there's a big difference) and we lost. 2-1 flattered us, massively. Bollocks, Steve. Utter horse shit. Four thousand fans travelled to watch that shambles tonight. They deserve so much better. To all Bruce's pundit mates who'll stick up for him and call Villa fans impatient for wanting him out now, this isn't just three matches. It's forty odd now. A full season's worth. And not one complete ninety minutes of competence. We can name a couple of random halves where we looked good. In a year. Millions spent. Millions. Bugger off Steve.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/aug/15/reading-aston-villa-championship-match-report

Danny Baker  Jack Byrne 1d ago

Heard rumours from people inside the club that a lot of the issue with Villa is Caulderwood the assistant manager
Apparently he is just awful during the week and is the real reason, besides Bruce's awful tactics, that we are dire

freddienoglove  Danny Baker 1d ago

I was always under the impression that Calderwood was awful 7 days a week. He certainly was when he masqueraded as a 'player' at Tottenham.



hamiltonricardo  Danny Baker 1d ago

We had him at Forest for a couple of years. Took an age to get the best squad in League 1 promoted. Did it eventually (just) and we were grateful for that but he was seriously limited, hence his eventual sacking halfway through our first season back in the Championship. Very negative, unadventurous coach. This story makes sense.

[FoxyAV]

Interesting set of comments from Yesterday's Guardian report on Villa v Reading. I particularly noted the ones about Calderwood (and the thread starts off with a great rant from a poster):

Bruce should have been sacked in May. He's tactically clueless, unable to motivate his players and has failed to instil any semblance of a style of play. He's wasted millions on players that he has no idea how to use. He spent the summer courting John Terry, who's not only a loathsome twat but a twat who plays in the one position that didn't need attention, and in doing so he's stripped Chester of the captaincy which has affected his form, weakening our defence - so he's somehow managed to spend millions in the summer to make us worse. He's allowed arseholes like Agbonlahor and Richards back into the fold, which is a kick in the teeth to the fans who watched them strolling their way through our relegation season without a care in the world, and he's said that Alan Hutton "picks himself". Alan Fucking Hutton. The football is shit, the results are shit, Bruce has got more chance of winning a modelling contract than he has of leading Villa to promotion this season. He is a footballing dinosaur, I don't care what he's done in the past, he clearly, evidently, demonstrably can't do it any more. Worse still he's delusional, he's adopted Paul Bullshit Lambert's habit of treating the fans like fucking idiots with post-match comments that bear no resemblance to the match that we all just saw. We didn't deserve to lose to Reading, Steve? We fucking did, you pillock. We were shite, as we always are. We set out not to lose (not to win, there's a big difference) and we lost. 2-1 flattered us, massively. Bollocks, Steve. Utter horse shit. Four thousand fans travelled to watch that shambles tonight. They deserve so much better. To all Bruce's pundit mates who'll stick up for him and call Villa fans impatient for wanting him out now, this isn't just three matches. It's forty odd now. A full season's worth. And not one complete ninety minutes of competence. We can name a couple of random halves where we looked good. In a year. Millions spent. Millions. Bugger off Steve.

That is excellent, sums it up perfectly. And he's right about "not one complete ninety minutes of competence. We can name a couple of random halves where we looked good. In a year."

[DelboyVilla]

I am really annoyed now with Xia, Wyness, Round and Little! They are condoning by their silence the complete and utter bullshit that Bruce is spouting to the press. Like the guy in DK's post said these managers have their journalist mates in their pockets. We as fans needed action from our Chairman or one of his minions after 2 heavy defeats where the tactic employed was to sit back and defend. The only excuse he hasn't used yet is a SHA-like gypsy curse.

He hasn't explained why he left out the only player to have shown any good form this season from the squad this season and why his first sub after going 2-0 down at Reading was Alan Fucking Hutton!

It is totally risible!

[Dions_Bald_Head]

Normally in times like this I'd be scouting round online for rumours, but so far everything that's surfacing is making the existing situation feel even more bleak.

[DelboyVilla]

Totally agree DBH! I want to see articles on who our next manager might be and some 'insides sources' referencing who is favorite not the verbal diarrhea from Bruce on how we need more strikers and midfielders etc! Putting on our boots and being real men! FFS!

[Dazzle]

I'm getting more than irritated with the treatment of McCormack if I'm honest. Here we have a player that we absolutely know is effective in this league, we absolutely know we'll get nowhere near our money back, and we absolutely know is on big money................and after all the comments about how poor the club has been previously with players and their contracts we go and make another bomb squad and devalue our own players. We're in the midst of a striker crisis because of injury and form and Bruce tells us that McCormack had his chance pre-season and didn't do enough to warrant a place, not even on the bench..............whereas Gabby and co put their names up in lights with their form, obviously.
Bruce needs to be told no more fucking money, no more fucking pensioners on a last payday, no more players full stop. Work with what you have or fuck off. I'm hoping he'd choose to fuck off before he leaves us requiring another clear out that'll take years to work through

[AstonThriller]

The article Joppe posted I believe I may have posted that here last season during our five match defeat run. I also sent it to the board back then and have sent it to the board this week aswell. But, apparently, the club don't care about his deficiencies where tactics are concerned. Because "stability" and his "record" is all that matters.

[deadbuzzardalive]

If Bruce is allowed to sign Colback, that will just underline the boards deriliction of duty in not sacking him, we don't need another midfielder and if we did it certainly wouldn't be Colback, hoping it's just a rumour, in fact Bruce shouldn't be allowed to sign anymore players; also being linked to Snodgrass again, Xia said earlier in the window that he's not on our radar, so if we suddenly go for him now, I'd be suspicious, that it's just an attempt to placate fans displeased with Bruce.

Worst thing about Bruce not being sacked, is that beating Norwich, would feel pretty hollow, knowing it would help to keep him in a job, and do more longer term damage than good.

[deadbuzzardalive]

Ian Taylor‏Verified account @IanTaylor7
Not just me but SB is under no illusion what will happen if he doesn't do the job. Not a good start but have time to put things right. #UTV

If they give him the time, it will also ruin our season, hope Taylor isn't speaking from a position of knowledge.

[AstonThriller]

I think the board are hoping for another "Derby" when we face Norwich on Saturday. Where we got a scrappy win against them at home and then went on that run of seven wins in nine games. It's pathetic, but I'm sure that's what their thinking is right now.

As for Snodgrass. I'd take him tbh as we need all the creative/attacking talent we can get right now imo.

[Villa_Dan]

If we come out and play Nrowich off the park and win by 2 or 3 then fair enough. Anything else and he can fuck off and keep going until he ends up in the ocean

[deadbuzzardalive]

If we win on Saturday, I guess it will be hard for them to sack him after that; I just hope they don't see a draw as being acceptable, but if that happens he'll probably at least get the Wigan and Bristol City games. If we lose to Norwich he has to go surely.

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