Steve Bruce

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There was a quote on Talk Sport certain i heard this right, Bruce has spent £75m at Villa, Warnock has spent £2.6m at Cardiff,

cash vs good old man management

do the maths
 

Bruce had (and has) his flaws but did a decent job at the Lane in difficult circumstances. The board also flat out lied to him about there being money for him to spend on new players. I don't blame him for leaving the Lane given the way he was treated.
 
Revolution said:
Bruce had (and has) his flaws but did a decent job at the Lane in difficult circumstances. The board also flat out lied to him about there being money for him to spend on new players. I don't blame him for leaving the Lane given the way he was treated.
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Totally agree it's just his quote is wrong.

Watching us v Man Utd showed the board even back then failed to Speculate to accumulate-we'd finished 9th the previous season and a couple of astute signings would have pushed us on.

At the end of that season we sold Deane and Bassett told the chairman he'd relegated us, he was right.

We then missed out on the Prem when big bucks started flowing.

We could and should have nailed the opportunity.

Fast forward 15 years or so again we found ourselves in the Prem and could have buried the Pigs into oblivion but failed to grasp the nettle.
 
I like Steve Bruce, comes across as a decent human being.
If I'd been treated like he was at United I'd have fucked off too.
He's spent his life in football, if he was as shit as some here make out, football would have regurgitated him long ago.
 
Revolution said:
Bruce had (and has) his flaws but did a decent job at the Lane in difficult circumstances. The board also flat out lied to him about there being money for him to spend on new players. I don't blame him for leaving the Lane given the way he was treated.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt that assurances on the financial side weren't held to (this was at the height of the battle between The Count and The McDonald), but there were several areas where he showed highly questionable lapses in management:
  • Sticking with himself in the side for as long as he did, culminating with Michael Bridges embarrassing him in his final ever game.
  • The apparent much-rumoured fallout with Holdsworth, leading to his sale.
  • His completely bizarre reluctance to use Dellas, which must have factored on his decision to return to Greece.
  • His inability to find a formation that played to the strengths of Borbokis and Quinn.
He was clearly inexperienced, and took that inexperience to Huddersfield too where he disappointed. But were he given either of those jobs today I've no doubt he'd approach them differently.
 
Revolution said:
Bruce had (and has) his flaws but did a decent job at the Lane in difficult circumstances
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I disagree. At best he was bang average. He was well received because he was a big name and followed Slade and Thompson, but his managerial record with us was unspectacular, and the football wasn't great either (especially compared to Spackman or Kendall).

Interestingly, he has almost the exact same managerial record as Nigel Adkins with us (different leagues of course):

Steve Bruce England 2 July 1998 17 May 1999 55 22 15 18 40%
Nigel Adkins England 2 June 2015 12 May 2016 54 22 14 18 40.74%

Comparing like for like, his win ratio is significantly behind Spackman, Kendall and Warnock (despite Warnock's season in the prem bringing his ratio down), and he's only a couple of percent above Robson!

Yes, he was sold a pile of bullshit by our (then) board, but any claim that he did anything spectacular or even "decent" while with with us is a myth. He's stepped on club after club because of his own hubris, even if we'd backed him with the finances he was apparently promised he'd have fucked off at the first opportunity. I hope he fails at Villa and club chairmen start to see him for what he is.
 
LoughboroBlade said:
I don't doubt that assurances on the financial side weren't held to (this was at the height of the battle between The Count and The McDonald), but there were several areas where he showed highly questionable lapses in management:
  • Sticking with himself in the side for as long as he did, culminating with Michael Bridges embarrassing him in his final ever game.
  • The apparent much-rumoured fallout with Holdsworth, leading to his sale.
  • His completely bizarre reluctance to use Dellas, which must have factored on his decision to return to Greece.
  • His inability to find a formation that played to the strengths of Borbokis and Quinn.
He was clearly inexperienced, and took that inexperience to Huddersfield too where he disappointed. But were he given either of those jobs today I've no doubt he'd approach them differently.
Click to expand...

You must also remember that Bruce had several players - most notably Saunders, Holdsworth and Stuart - sold out from under him, the latter 2 at a crucial time after we'd been doing well - the team dropped out of the playoff places after the latter 2 sales.

I don't know if Bruce and Holdsworth had fallen out but Bruce was certainly opposed to his sale.

As an aside, I always think that people talk about Dellas with the benefit of hindsight. Bruce was the 3rd manager who was reluctant to use him. He showed glimpses, sure, and United did not use him properly, but if you'd told any Blades fan he'd be winning Euro 2004 they'd have laughed in your face.

Bruce also got something out of Kachouro before he got injured - which I thought was impossible after his showing the previous year - and Marcelo had a really good season which he never replicated anywhere else. Woodhouse and Derry also came on nicely under him.

I always thought 8th place and 5th round of the cup (and cheated out of further progress by Arsenal) wasn't a bad effort given the trainwreck in the boardroom.
 
Flawed said:
Sorry, but I disagree. At best he was bang average. He was well received because he was a big name and followed Slade and Thompson, but his managerial record with us was unspectacular, and the football wasn't great either (especially compared to Spackman or Kendall).

Interestingly, he has almost the exact same managerial record as Nigel Adkins with us (different leagues of course):

Steve Bruce England 2 July 1998 17 May 1999 55 22 15 18 40%
Nigel Adkins England 2 June 2015 12 May 2016 54 22 14 18 40.74%

Comparing like for like, his win ratio is significantly behind Spackman, Kendall and Warnock (despite Warnock's season in the prem bringing his ratio down), and he's only a couple of percent above Robson!

Yes, he was sold a pile of bullshit by our (then) board, but any claim that he did anything spectacular or even "decent" while with with us is a myth. He's stepped on club after club because of his own hubris, even if we'd backed him with the finances he was apparently promised he'd have fucked off at the first opportunity. I hope he fails at Villa and club chairmen start to see him for what he is.
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You don't think 8th place in the Championship with limited funds and the sale of our best players is a decent record? Ok, fine. Heath or Warnock couldn't finish that high in the next 3 seasons. Will Wilder do as well this year?

And I certainly didn't say he did spectacularly. That's a strawman.
 
I'm loving the Villa situation at the minute, I've got a mate who's a villa fan, so not only have I had my pig supporting friends, family and colleagues telling me how difficult we're going to find it, but I've had his smug arrogance all pre season about how we're not going to be able to compete with the big spenders etc.

Morale and expectation have a lot of influence on teams in any league and in this one in particular, teams think they can spend their way out of the shit but it doesn't seem to work that way in the Championship, tactical nouse is a must imo and I think Wilder is going to have to change things up a bit more often if we're going to have any kind of relative success. Teams will be spending a lot more time and effort scouting than they did to us last year. Look at Wednesday as an example, teams have got them figured out and they've got so much expectation on them that they're not going to achieve equivilant success for the amount of money they've spent, they won't get results and the fans will get on their back making it even harder.

Edit: As seems to be happening at Villa.
 
I do have to say I attended a meet the manager thing with granny Bruce and he wasn't a happy man...the board had offered him the job with promises of shitloads of money. Gets the job and told he has nowt to spend. He was not happy so no suprise he left tbh

He bought some beer though.
 
Revolution said:
You must also remember that Bruce had several players - most notably Saunders, Holdsworth and Stuart - sold out from under him, the latter 2 at a crucial time after we'd been doing well - the team dropped out of the playoff places after the latter 2 sales.

I don't know if Bruce and Holdsworth had fallen out but Bruce was certainly opposed to his sale.

As an aside, I always think that people talk about Dellas with the benefit of hindsight. Bruce was the 3rd manager who was reluctant to use him. He showed glimpses, sure, and United did not use him properly, but if you'd told any Blades fan he'd be winning Euro 2004 they'd have laughed in your face.

Bruce also got something out of Kachouro before he got injured - which I thought was impossible after his showing the previous year - and Marcelo had a really good season which he never replicated anywhere else. Woodhouse and Derry also came on nicely under him.

I always thought 8th place and 5th round of the cup (and cheated out of further progress by Arsenal) wasn't a bad effort given the trainwreck in the boardroom.
Click to expand...

Oh I don't disagree with the point on the sales against his wishes, but we were hardly doing brilliantly in that late 98/ early 99 period – the Arsenal farce papers over what had been a disappointing set of displays in the league. It was the first season I was a season ticket holder and recall it not being great to watch that latter half of the year – we never really looked like a team likely to trouble the top 6, despite the 8th placed finish.

Dellas was regularly discussed in pre-match/post-match interviews, and the topic of why he wasn't more involved was a regular one on BladesUnited/Viewpoints at the time. It wasn't simply a case of rewriting history after he turned into a good player – people recognised his ability and couldn't really understand why he wasn't more involved.

The Saunders/Katman partnership was very good at the time, sadly broken up by Saunders bailing out the week before the aforementioned Sunderland disaster to head to Benfica (I think Katchouro got his injury in that game). The Saunders departure hit him hard.

I haven't even mentioned Jonathan Hunt yet...
 
Face like a blobfish

BruceAlike.jpg
 

Revolution said:
Bruce had (and has) his flaws but did a decent job at the Lane in difficult circumstances. The board also flat out lied to him about there being money for him to spend on new players. I don't blame him for leaving the Lane given the way he was treated.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with that in isolation, but his record since would feed the opinion that he is a serial quitter. Either all his clubs have had terrible boards, or he is a bit lacking in testicular fortitude.
 
The Crab said:
I'd agree with that in isolation, but his record since would feed the opinion that he is a serial quitter. Either all his clubs have had terrible boards, or he is a bit lacking in testicular fortitude.
Click to expand...
Most of them have. He stayed at Brum for quite a while under the porn kings but Sunderland and Hull are car crash clubs.
 
Well with Burton 2:1 up at the moment against brum leaves villa and Bruce on the bottom of the table. Pressure will be on.
 
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