Godders

8Huddersfield conceded 10 more than us this season. Their goal difference was worse than ours. They lost by 3 or more goals on 4 occasions. They didn't score a goal in the entire playoffs. They lost 9-1 on aggregate to Fulham! If that's what a progressive manager means, I'd rather stick with Bruce. Seriously, looking at some of their results, our supporters would be calling for his head if he was here, despite the style of football he was playing. I don't particularly like the comparison to Huddersfield to be honest. Yes they went up, but they've massively overachieved in doing so imo. I can't help but think they could be in for a massive shock next season. The jury is still out on the Wagner hype for me. I don't know to what extent this season was a Leicester-esque outlier, or the fact that Wagner is the best manager in the league. At the moment I'm leaning towards the former.

Really? I thought any time a cross came in he was nailed on to be on it.

Really? You really think that Brendan Rodgers, manager of the team that convincingly won the SPL this season, manager of a team that will probably be playing Champions League football next season, would want to come to Villa? Do you really think he's a realistic target? If you're after a manager who's "progressive" (and by progressive, I'm assuming from the context of your post that you mean someone who will play possession based football), surely Garry Monk is the most realistic (for transparancy, I will declare here that I would prefer to keep Bruce over getting either Monk and Rodgers in at this current time).

Hopefully this is the summer we find out that our good Dr is Levy-esque in his dealings, and he shifts the outs for £100mill!

Disagree GH. Reading Wyness's comments, I think it shows a board who are acutely aware of the rules and how to maximise our competative advantage without breaking them. Without wanting to turn this into another stick for you to beat Bruce with, I think this shows a board doing everything they can to get us up.

Absolutely agree @mykeyb. Blind faith just doesn't cut it. And it's because I make sure she's the right girl for me before I move in, that I have the confidence to stay with her when we inevitably have a bit of a barney, or go through a bit of a rough patch, rather than ditching her in the blind hope I can find someone better.

Blimey, your mate moves quick!! I've never moved in with a girl before I've slept with her, seen her without make up and hungover, been to her place, been cooked for by her etc. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to see if there's a future with a girl before I move in with her.

Fake news!! Has to be. As if the club have some idea of what they're doing. I'm calling bs on this whole article. It's obvious we're really on the verge of bankruptcy, heading towards £1 billion worth of fines for falling foul of FFP, all playing out against the background of eye-wateringly embarrassing football driven by an over-the-hill, tactical dinosaur with no idea of how the modern game of football is played. #FML.

He's been saying for weeks now he's only looking to get a couple of quality players in this window, and wants to get some of the wages off the books. I'm sure he's perfectly happy with the situation. Especially since this window would have been being planned for months at the club.

No we don't. We get 3 months of reading "Bruce isn't good enough!", "yes he is!", "no he's not!" posts on here without any games to break it up.

Ashley Westwood

And sacking him now and getting someone else in, starting the journey fron scratch again wouldn't be taking one helluva chance? There's significant risk in both, and that's the nature of football. There's no guarantee that Bruce will get us up. There's no guarantee anyone else will get us up. Painting it any other way is naive at best. For me, there is less risk in keeping Bruce than there is getting rid of him now.

Claim that we're not the finished article? Bruce himself has said it. Recently. Other than that, it's easy to determine: Folks, straw poll - if you're happy that the Villa team we're seeing at the moment under Bruce is the "finished article", please mention myself and Grasshopper in a post by 3pm tomorrow saying "I think this team is the finished article". Well, Bruce has been quoted as saying he's already been enquiring as to the availability of Premiership players. “I’m ringing around managers who I know in the Premier League ..." (http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/steve-bruce-outlines-potential-transfer-12827171) So, he know's who he wants. He must have agreed these targets with the others at the club. He must have agreed a transfer budget to get these players. Otherwise, I doubt he'd be calling around managers he knows in the premier league. Careful Grasshopper, you've pulled people up on posts in the past where they're trying to pass opinions off as facts. This is not a fact. This is your opinion. Disagree with the bit not in bold. I've said before I don't particularly care if we average 30% posession or 60% posession. As long as we win the games to get us promoted. That said, someone posted Hull's stats last season which suggested that actually, Bruce does know how to play dominant football (and given he was their manager last season, presumably does know how to get teams to play said football in the current climate). Agree with the bit in bold, though I have a sneaking feeling that Bruce may be able to do this himself next season. Here's two arguments: 1. There is no guarantee that any football manager can get us up next season. Any situation that is not guaranteed means there is a risk it won't happen. Therefore, there is a risk that whatever football manager is at the helm will not get us up next season. 2. Leeds finished 13th last season. Leeds are currently outside the playoffs under Garry Monk, even though he's had more games in charge than Steve Bruce. Therefore, we cannot conclude that Garry Monk would perform better at Aston Villa than Steve Bruce has, considering he would take us over in roughly the same spot that Leeds were when he came in. The objective is to go up next season. That's over a year away.

He's literally just said, again, he's looking to add a bit more quality to the team. Seems to me like he's been telling you for a few weeks now what he's going to do about it.

As expected then by the sounds of it, a handful in and a good chunk out.

I think everyone agrees that we're far from being the finished article, but we're now on that journey with Bruce. If we sack him now and get someone else in, all the meetings that have happened between the football men identifying summer targets, the meetings with suits agreeing the money needed, the initial enquiries made to clubs, the meetings Bruce would have had with his coaches agreeing the summer training strategy, the chats Bruce and his coaches would have had with players both here and on loan, all of that would be wasted. Put simply, we'd be right back to square one. We'd be at a distinct disadvantage to most other clubs who would have been planning this summer for months. Proper planning and preperation prevents piss poor performance. If it's clear that Bruce is not up to the task (to most, there is no clear evidence yet to suggest that he is not) the club will start planning for his departure. They may already have started on contingency planning in case we have to let him go early next season, but that takes time to make any transition as smooth as possible. Getting another manager in because of grass is greener reasoning puts us back so far as to put at risk our promotion next season imo, especially when there's no logical reason to suggest that Monk, or whoever, would be any more likely than Bruce to get us up. The point of my post was that the expectation is rightly, to get promoted next season. Bringing in a new manager undoes a lot of work that's gone on behind the scenes this season specifically aimed at achieving that goal. My opinion is that a new coach would be far more likely to not get the start that you, I and others want to see, and on that basis, there would be some pretty vocal people calling for his head.

And then we can all call for Monk's head in September when we're outside the playoff spots while a new coaching set-up and a raft of new first team players are all trying to bed in at the same time.

Nope, it will be an 18/19 Champions League push topic!

If you, or anyone else, is out in their Villa top today, then someone who's seen the article could well think "Oh, that persons wearing a Villa top. That reminds me of that article I saw earlier." Even if the people that have seen the article do not conclude that all Villa fans are dickheads, for a period of time, all Villa fans will be associated with the yobbish behaviour of these fans, purely because of the fact that seeing something identifiably Villa will trigger them to recall the article. Personally, I'm a proud person and consider myself to be an upstanding member of society, so to know that I would be associated with this behaviour because of the fact that I support this great club dissapoints me. So I, for one, certainly feel a sense of shame.

That's handy then, we're a championship club.

@blandy I've been thinking about the coaching side this morning. Mainly as a result of another post asking what will be different in the pre-season that will mean we're better next season. This is the conclusion I've reached: In the Championship, you're lucky if you get 7 days between matches. Now of those 7 days, one will be matchday, so no meaningful training will be done, which leaves 6. 1 though is probably going to be light recovery from the previous match, so that's 5 days, maybe half a day travelling is 4 and a half days. The players are still human, so they're not going to be able to train at full near match intensity solidly for those 4 and a half days- they'll need recovery in between, otherwise we risk many more injuries than we have. In a week where we have no midweek game, we'd be lucky to have more than 2 days where the players can train at a high enough intensity that somewhat resembles a match. The rest will be lighter sessions, video analysis etc I imagine. But all these spare days will be spent preparing for the next game. The defense will be drilling in their offside trap if they're up against a striker who likes to make late runs in behind. The full backs and wingers will be drilling in pushing high up the pitch if the next opposition tend to leave a lot of space on the flanks. My point is that there really is very little time during the season to do anything other than specifically prepare for the next match. Yes, I agree coaching is a major factor in the way we're playing. I think that's far more to do with the time constraints imposed by the season though. The age old adage though is that a good team is built from the back. It's reasonable to suggest that what little time during the season Bruce has had to work on a style of play, he's used to make us better defensively, and that looks like it's worked with that run we had recently. Given a pre-season, where has time to implement his vision without worrying about making sure the team are simply doing drills to try and beat the next opponent, we should see improvement in the way we're playing going forward.

It may be misplaced naivety, but I can only conclude that it takes a certain amount of skill and foresight to carry out a fraud like this. Based on the skill and foresight the previous setup showed in running this club, I can only conclude that we have nothing to worry about.

What, a bad feeling about us? Has there been anything anywhere linking us with this investigation?

Im not sure it will drift, but there will certainly be teams on shorter odds. You can tell we're not a 'true' favourite by the fact that we're odds against for promotion. If we we're title favourites, we'd definitely be odds on for promotion.

But this can be said of whoever is the manager. Whoever is in charge, there is always a risk that we won't get the start we should. For the reasons outlined before in this thread, and the fact that Bruce would have had most of a season, a whole preseason and two windows with the club, I would argue he's the least risky option for a strong start next season.