flashingqwerty

i cant believe we are getting undone by fry... what a bunch of amateurs we really are! absolute disgrace. though id rather be out to focus on the league.

this is a very unfair generalisation. as a brouter i have never called a bruce victory 'lucky'. i have said our winning streak was unsustainable given our style of play - and i think few would disagree with that in either camp. i feel a more progressive manager could get more out of the players we have (as i dont think the players we have suit how we play). i hope to god bruce proves me wrong i really do but the evidence of his tenure to date suggests otherwise. either way i will celebrate when we win be annoyed when we draw and downright inconsolable when we lose - such is the fate of any football fan

i dont think that he meant anyone is a lesser fan for having a different opinion - i'm also a brouter. but i would never hope, let alone put money on viĺla losing. If my opinion of bruce is correct, results will seal his fate. if my opinion is wrong and we get proted then fantastic! Seems like a win-win for me.

great to have bruce shove one in the faces of the brouters (of which i am one). fingers crossed he can go on to get the team doing this on a consistent basis now as we all had hoped would be the case at the start of the season. happy new year everyone!!!

at the start of the season promotion was achievable. with where we are now and the amount of work that needs to be done (or undone depending on your perspective) i dont believe is realistic. paŕticularly in light of our lack of fit strikers. yes, Bruce should and could have gotten this group promoted but anyone coming in at this stage will need time to coach these players back into playing in the manner we know they can. i believe this will take longer than we can afford for promotion this season.

"sack the manager, sack the manager!"

i dont want bruce sacked because i think another manager will get us promoted this season. i dont think protion this season is achievable regardless of who is in charge. what i do want is an end to the shorttermist appointments and quick fix mentality as i dont think it works. it certainly hasnt thus far. i want a manager appointed who can bring an ethos, work ethic and style of play to the entire club. with the right manager and coaches we could build an aston villa way - then as managers and players come and go we should be looking at bringing in people who fit our ethos and not be looking to rebuild every few years with a different way of doing things which is what has been happening for over a decade now. the way the team plays should be consistent from grass roots to the first team. everyone at the club should have the same clear picture of who we are and what we are trying to achieve including the way we intend to achieve it. bruce was never going to bring anything other than short termism to the club - by his own admission he doesnt coach the team and doesnt believe in tactics. in the modern game this approach wont ever be successful over a prolonged period. we need to move on and start looking at building something for 5-10 years down the road. if that means staying in this league a few more years so be it - but it needs to happen and the sooner the better!

Well Bruce just keeps making the same mistakes doesn't he? Can' get hogan to play up front on his own, so plays him up front on his own. We have a midfielder that has made a serious individual error in each of our last 3 games, let' keep him in the team. We have a right back playing poorly, and we only have 3 other players who play that position but let' keep playing him. Then to say we areas bad now as when he took over (despite him having signed the ajority of the players in the squad) is just unfathomable. The man needs to be removed asap as he has clearly lost the plot!

Details anyone?

The distance between 5th and 2nd is the same as the distance between 5th and 16th. A few bad results and we could quickly find ourselves in the bottom half...

Do you mean posters on here or pundits? Not a dig or windup - genuinely interested

Why would he need to see into the future to see kodjia was out injured for a long period when the injury happened last season? Its also not unreasonable to think that a player returning from such a serious injury might need time to get back into the side to prevent additional injuries. Its also not unreasonable to think that a winger with a poor futness record in a position we have no natural backup in might get injured again. I see nothing particularly unusual in any of our injuries this season except JTs. In fact i think they could pretty much all have been easily predicted.

Whelan has made this particular mistake 3 times since he arrived. To me that suggesys he needs to either pay more attention or reduce his opinion of his passing ability because he is trying to make passes he clearly isnt capable of making. And thats only the his mistake has been capitalised on 3 times, i can think of at least another half dozen similar passes he has made that he hot away with - so yes, is is doing something over and over again that isnt working and he certainly needs to be addressing it and so should the manager and coaching staff. He is by no means the only player doing this either which does point to an overiding influence resulting in this effect.

Thats an opinion and not a fact. Most of my family work in the building trade and although a porch collapsing it a bit extreme, roofs leaking and broken windows etc are not uncommon errors for which the person involved is always either moved onto a simpler tasks or paired with a more experienced person to learn from the mistake. The analogy seemed appropriate as a mistake leading to a goal is as damaging to a team as a porch falling down is the the integrity of a house. Not the end of the world, can be recovered but makes everything harder.

Tro i dont think we are saying too much different here (for once) I do believe that Bruce is a good manager. I dont believe he (if indeed it was him) has signed the correct type of players to suit the way he wants us to play. So as we are in a situation where our ability to make new signings is very limited, it seems to me that it would make more sense to look to bring in a manager whose footballing philosophy more closely matches the abilities/talents within the squad rather than persisting with bruces square pegs in round holes approach (yes its harsh and overly simplistic, but its how it appears to me from the outside). Like grasshopper i am clearly a brouter, but just wanted to add that no matter whether he stays or goes, i do not see us getting promoted this season. I just dont think our squad runs deep enough to compete in such a physically demanding league.

So youre contradicting yourself? As a team we do analyze games and errors but whelan doesnt have to? Why? Just because its a glaringly obvious error ( and not the 1st time he has made that same error i might add) does not give him a free pass to not review and work on things to prevent it happening again. A much cleverer man than me once said that the definition of insanity was to repeat the same scenario without changing anything and to expect a different result. Not having whelan review, address and work on this error is the very apitomy (sp?) of this.

Punishment is a strong word for benching someone! Take this example: you're a builder and you built 10 houses when the porch of the 10th house collapses. Are you saying that the guy who built that porch should just be left to carry on because hes an adult and knows he made a mistake? Cos that would be a bad idea... You should work with the guy to figure out what went wrong and maybe buddy with him to help him improve. Say then youve built another 10 houses and now the porch of hiuse 20 falls down. The guy is still an adult and still knows he done wrong but you didnt punish him by taking him off of building porches so youre at the very least partially responsible as you allowed him to keep building. In your approach nothing gets said and he goes on to build more porches. For me he has now shown he is not safe to be building porches so i need to pull him and get someone to fill in. He can watch his replacement build porches to help him learn how to do it better. From here i would gradually increase the amount of work i allow him to do on builds until he regains my (and his own) confidence. This is how management should work. Fail once fine, lets review what happened, understand why and work on putting something in place to prevent a future ocurrance. Fail again, then i need you to take a step back to gain some perspective and do more work on improving your focus. I will gradually increase your level or responsibility assuming you dont continue to fail, until you show you can do it on your own. Its not a punishment to have someone take a step back for perspective after multiple mistakes, its a guidance and training task. If he sees being dropped as a punishment when he has made multiple serious errors then id say he is probably not cut out for the job.

For the last 20 years and more teams have been watching games back to analyse and address errors. If we arent having players review there mistakes and taking positive action to rectify those mistakes we've no business being a professional sports club as this is as basic as it gets.

Tro, there are sides in this league getting similar results to us playing a far superior brand of football with players widely regarded by experienced pros to be of a far lower quality than ours. So whilst i agree with you to a degree, i think a different manger could get far more out of the players we have than Bruce is getting.

Did it though? In his entire tenure i can only think of a few games (less than 5) where i felt we actually played well. On the whole we are an awful football team and very rarely look like scoring but for individual magic.

We've been saying that for over a year now...

How does a team win when they create no scoring opportunities but concede loads?

We played dour negative football for 70 minutes until he brought on some strikers and we only didnt loose by 5 or 6 thanks to the heroics of the goalie. We didnt create a single good svoring chance, derby created 6. To my mind that means the manager dod a bad job regardless of injuries.

Probably because Bruce signed him, coached him, gave him time, saw him play shit and continued to pick him?

Bad maths! 5 defeats = 15 points dropped 5 draws = 10 points dropped Thats 25 lost points not 20