Steve Bruce

[Zatman]

4 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

You know what Bruce can have a dig at fans as much as he wants if he wins games. It's become a little bit 'us v him'.Prove us all wrong Brucey boy then tell us we know nothing. But if you continue to get it wrong prepare for the backlash! 

Thats it if he was a successful manager he could throw his shit at the fans and they wouldnt care

Fact is he is not successful and is getting fair criticism

[peterms]

9 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Thats it if he was a successful manager he could throw his shit at the fans and they wouldnt care

Fact is he is not successful and is getting fair criticism

Yes.  If he had been achieving reasonable results in comparison to the squad he has and the time he's been here, there would be little criticism.

I think a lot of people who were not thrilled with his appointment spent last season holding their tongues, prepared to give him time if he could deliver results.

The start to the season, with poor results and some truly appalling football (which he even acknowledged himself), brought forth criticism that had been withheld.

What else would anyone reasonably expect?

[DaveAV1]

7 hours ago, RimmyJimmer said:

 

Well lets not. 

If your going to dish it out expect some back dave 

Well I didn't insult anyone on VT Jimmy and if you think that the implication that Steve Bruce could be an idiot on an online forum would bother the bloke then you clearly don't consider him to be thick skinned enough to manage a major football team. I don't have any faith in him to get us promoted and think he has made a lot of mistakes, but despite that as a bloke, I don't particular dislike him.

I do however believe that it is very rare and also wrong for a manager to snipe at the fans. Just imagine if the CEO of a large high profile company was under pressure from his shareholders and resorted to petty digs at them. It wouldn't help the company and it wouldn't help the CEO, it's just wrong.

I reacted to what you said because you said that people who no longer wanted Steve Bruce to be our manager were idiots. I happen to think that he has had his chance and isn't going to succeed, but if he proves that he can get us promoted then I'd be delighted. Some people disagree and think he's possibly still the right man, I think they're wrong, but I don't think that they are idiots. 

[mykeyb]

5 hours ago, Nigel said:

 

 

 

Im all up for people having different opinions, its good to have different ideas given, as long as they are put well and fair in their principles.

If folks dont like Bruce because they dont think he can get us up then thats good and fair.  However its you cant suddenly turn around and say anything good he does will be the result of 'stumbling' or 'winning despite Bruce', then it becomes nothing more than a witch hunt. If we win it will be as much to do with his management as losing will, and he will be judged accordingly.

Its also worth mentioning that it was him who built this squad to 'stumble' onto a winning formula!

 

well after signing 14 players you would hope he wouldn't need to stumble onto it

[TRO]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

Yes.  If he had been achieving reasonable results in comparison to the squad he has and the time he's been here, there would be little criticism.

I think a lot of people who were not thrilled with his appointment spent last season holding their tongues, prepared to give him time if he could deliver results.

The start to the season, with poor results and some truly appalling football (which he even acknowledged himself), brought forth criticism that had been withheld.

What else would anyone reasonably expect?

I think "holding their tongues" is a bit of a euphemism.

some were on his case from the off.....and not relented.

check the thread.

Edited September 18, 2017 by TRO

[peterms]

22 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think "holding their tongues" is a bit of a euphemism.

some were on his case from the off.....and not relented.

check the thread.

Just read the first few pages.

Most unimpressed,  most saying give him a chance,  and a couple of quite prescient posts.

I stamd by my earlier comment, that a lot of people have been holding their tongues despite rhinking he was the wrong appointment.

[TrentVilla]

26 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think "holding their tongues" is a bit of a euphemism.

some were on his case from the off.....and not relented.

check the thread.

Yes and they've been proven right to date.

[AshVilla]

Bruce is like a reverse Mourinho

The arrogance is there, the managerial ability certainly isn't

Edited September 18, 2017 by AshVilla

[striker]

8 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

I think, if directly comparing Villa and Newcastle last season then you don't have to look too far past the fact that they didn't change Manager part way through the season as being a major contributor in their success versus our outcome.

Or simply they had a far better manager who would imo have gotten Villa promoted if he had been Villa manager.

[striker]

9 hours ago, briny_ear said:

The last 11 months will be forgotten in a twinkling if he gets us on a winning run and we are challenging for promotion places.

And what is "best for the club" is surely that we achieve stability and get a settled squad who play welll for their manager so that they can go on such a run. It would be far better if this could be done with Bruce in post than by having to return to ground zero and start all over again with a new manager and probably another change of squad.

Obviously if Bruce can't get us playing in this way then he has to go and all the negatives of yet further disruption will have to be borne. But having our third manager in 18 months after having failed to produce a convincing Championship squad will be nothing to celebrate and there will be few positives in my view.

With the current Villa squad Bruce should not have Villa challenging for promotional places. He should have Villa in the top two going for automatic promotion.

I also do not subscribe to the view that a new manager coming in would leave Villa starting from scratch again. Any new manager worth his salt should be able to work with the players Villa have now.

[briny_ear]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

Just read the first few pages.

Most unimpressed,  most saying give him a chance,  and a couple of quite prescient posts.

I stamd by my earlier comment, that a lot of people have been holding their tongues despite rhinking he was the wrong appointment.

You need to go beyond the first few pages. Just sample a few from June-August this year and you will find virtually nothing but hysterical squawking about how Bruce is a useless dinosaur manager etc., and failure to sack him would lead to our doom.

This has led inexorably to the current crazy situation where people have been wishing for the team to lose matches so Bruce will be sacked.

It all seems to be based on the premise that arresting our sad decline through shocking and shambolic ownership and management over the past 5/6 years is now the easiest thing in the world and Bruce's failure to do so in a trice proves his total incompetence.

In my view everyone needs to calm down and reflect on these simplistic views about our current status and prospects a little more maturely. Bruce needs to be allowed to get on with the job he has been doing.  Also have an intelligent look at our recent performances and recognise they are improving.

[Junxs]

6 hours ago, briny_ear said:

You need to go beyond the first few pages. Just sample a few from June-August this year and you will find virtually nothing but hysterical squawking about how Bruce is a useless dinosaur manager etc., and failure to sack him would lead to our doom.

This has led inexorably to the current crazy situation where people have been wishing for the team to lose matches so Bruce will be sacked.

It all seems to be based on the premise that arresting our sad decline through shocking and shambolic ownership and management over the past 5/6 years is now the easiest thing in the world and Bruce's failure to do so in a trice proves his total incompetence.

In my view everyone needs to calm down and reflect on these simplistic views about our current status and prospects a little more maturely. Bruce needs to be allowed to get on with the job he has been doing.  Also have an intelligent look at our recent performances and recognise they are improving.

Well that's around the time people realised he wasnt up to the task.. he spent big in January and had some great players already at his disposal but came up with rubbish performances until the end of the season and only managed a poor 13th in the league. Even during the good run we had in Feb / March it was all lucky wins from crap performances.

June - Auhust was also around the time a lot of people were saying he just needs a preseason.. which those who wanted him out knew was a load of nonsense, as it proved to be. 

Also those that think we have turned a corner by beating Barnsley should be considerate of what happened after the Norwich game, when it all went tits up again. 

If he had shown just a few signs of putting a team together towards the end of last season then people wouldnt be on his case, it all comes down to him no matter which way you look at it.

[peterms]

7 hours ago, briny_ear said:

You need to go beyond the first few pages. Just sample a few from June-August this year and you will find virtually nothing but hysterical squawking about how Bruce is a useless dinosaur manager etc., and failure to sack him would lead to our doom.

This has led inexorably to the current crazy situation where people have been wishing for the team to lose matches so Bruce will be sacked.

It all seems to be based on the premise that arresting our sad decline through shocking and shambolic ownership and management over the past 5/6 years is now the easiest thing in the world and Bruce's failure to do so in a trice proves his total incompetence.

In my view everyone needs to calm down and reflect on these simplistic views about our current status and prospects a little more maturely. Bruce needs to be allowed to get on with the job he has been doing.  Also have an intelligent look at our recent performances and recognise they are improving.

Well I read some from July and August.  I don't see hysterical squawking, more like a general agreement that last season was a failure, with his critics going on to make specific criticisms of negative style, playing people out of position, concern about some of the signings.

As the results start to come in, the tone becomes one of mounting alarm about the way we are playing, the selections, and the results.

There were certainly problems arising from the last 6 years, but at this stage, I don't think team selection and tactics can really be blamed on that.  The criticisms seem to me to be about things which are within the control of the manager.

It's also clear from looking over those posts that the increasing stridency of the criticism is caused in part by the growing realisation that if we don't get promotion this year, things will get quite a bit harder.

Hysteria seems a very inappropriate description. 

[TrentVilla]

7 hours ago, briny_ear said:

You need to go beyond the first few pages. Just sample a few from June-August this year and you will find virtually nothing but hysterical squawking about how Bruce is a useless dinosaur manager etc., and failure to sack him would lead to our doom.

This has led inexorably to the current crazy situation where people have been wishing for the team to lose matches so Bruce will be sacked.

It all seems to be based on the premise that arresting our sad decline through shocking and shambolic ownership and management over the past 5/6 years is now the easiest thing in the world and Bruce's failure to do so in a trice proves his total incompetence.

In my view everyone needs to calm down and reflect on these simplistic views about our current status and prospects a little more maturely. Bruce needs to be allowed to get on with the job he has been doing.  Also have an intelligent look at our recent performances and recognise they are improving.

With respect this is a pretty patronising post mate. Someone could write a counter to that last paragraph very easily along the lines of people needing to stop sticking their heads in the sand but I'm not going to be the one to do that.

I will though take issue with a few of your other points.

At the tell end of last season there were some raising concerns, some as you say thought him a bit of a football dinasaur. But to say the thread contained "virtually nothing but hysterical squawking" is simply not true.

There were a lot of people at the time prepared to give him more time, to give him a pre-season and there were plenty of others who didn't want another change. But there were others that questioned the nature of our performances, the lack of any real system, the relatively defensive football and the performances of the players Bruce signed in the January.

All those things were completely justified concerns and/or criticisms.

As for the dinosaur comment, well would you describe him as an inventive, innovative modern coach? This is a man who once said he didn't really do tactics after all, he is old school, he is from the old school of management and he is very much of his time. Obviously calling him a dinosaur is an insult but it is one born out of some truth I'm afraid.

Yes said failing to sack him in the summer would be a mistake, that it would lead to our doom, well they may yet be right. We are currently 13th, 5 points off the play offs and despite the last win not actually playing all that well in a season in which we need promotion. If we fail to go up then the financial consequences will start to be felt. Perhaps people making those warnings in the summer had a point, perhaps not, it is too early to say but they certainly weren't squawking hysterically.

I don't wish for the team to lose but I'm not casting judgement on those who think a temporary setback would be of longer term benefit.

I don't think a single person thinks arresting the decline in the club over a number of years is easy. That's a pretty false argument and Bruce has been here 11 months and we've seen virtually no progress in results or performances to date.

The job Bruce has been doing frankly isn't very good, criticism is the natural response to that and to suggest people need to calm down, be more mature, look at things more intelligently simply because they don't see whatever progress it is you think you see is just wrong.

 

[Tommo_b]

I don't know how I feel about Bruce at the moment anymore, I'm like a weeble rocking back and forth!

Tho what I do find telling is the people with the most to lose and who work at Villa on a day to day basis have stuck with Bruce, so maybe we don't get to see the full picture and the performance on the pitch isn't what's served up in training etc. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

People who talk about hysteria have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, and that includes Steve Bruce himself. There is no hysteria. This is a club with massive expectations and rightly so, we are not your typical Championship club who should be content to just potter around and maybe 'challenge' for a top 6 spot, we are still a club with incredible pull relative to other in this league, we have spent an absolute fortune on players in terms of transfer fees and wages, so criticising a manager for finishing 13th last season and for having us sitting bottom half this season is not 'hysteria'. It is, and should be, part and parcel of what comes with this job, because guess what? Bottom half is not good enough. It is simply inexcusable given the resources that have been made available and our obvious objective of automatic promotion.

[peterms]

14 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

Tho what I do find telling is the people with the most to lose and who work at Villa on a day to day basis have stuck with Bruce, so maybe we don't get to see the full picture and the performance on the pitch isn't what's served up in training etc. 

There are people whose position depends on Bruce, or whose judgement would be called into question if he were to be sacked.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Apart from those, is there a strong feeling among staff that he's doing a good job?  I have no idea, I know no-one at the club.
 

[RimmyJimmer]

11 hours ago, DaveAV1 said:

Well I didn't insult anyone on VT Jimmy and if you think that the implication that Steve Bruce could be an idiot on an online forum would bother the bloke then you clearly don't consider him to be thick skinned enough to manage a major football team. I don't have any faith in him to get us promoted and think he has made a lot of mistakes, but despite that as a bloke, I don't particular dislike him.

I do however believe that it is very rare and also wrong for a manager to snipe at the fans. Just imagine if the CEO of a large high profile company was under pressure from his shareholders and resorted to petty digs at them. It wouldn't help the company and it wouldn't help the CEO, it's just wrong.

I reacted to what you said because you said that people who no longer wanted Steve Bruce to be our manager were idiots. I happen to think that he has had his chance and isn't going to succeed, but if he proves that he can get us promoted then I'd be delighted. Some people disagree and think he's possibly still the right man, I think they're wrong, but I don't think that they are idiots. 

It's not the fact that fans who want him out are idiots, thats not what I'm saying. It's the over the top reaction to everything that is idiotic. Yes if you want him out...fair enough, but name calling, hoping the team lose etc is idiotic. If he's had insults hurled at him, which I imagine is highly likely, then he is well within his rights to say something back.

I try and look at the big picture. We've had about 40 new players arrive at vp in a little over 2 years, we have 2 players who has been here through it all...gabby and hutton!! Thats hardly much to build on is it? Time is what is needed not more change. Yes some of the football has been awful, but bruce has the experience to get us up the league. To compare us to other clubs and managers is unrealistic. Every situation is different. We have been awful year after year for 6 years, add to that the mismanagement of everything off the pitch,  you then have a huge mess to sort out. If it took 6 years to get us into that mess then its not going to be turned around in 12 months.

 

[blandy]

44 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

people ... who work at Villa on a day to day basis have stuck with Bruce, so maybe we don't get to see the full picture and the performance on the pitch isn't what's served up in training etc

Yeah, fair comment to an extent. We definitely don't get to see the full picture. Also, the people looking from above, inside the club, might have come to the view a while ago that the problems at the club, that grew over 6 or more years were/are not entirely fixable within 12 - 18 months. I have no idea. But they may feel, for example, that one of the main problems has been multiple multiple managers, different views on playing, selling, buying, coaching etc. They may think that it is nigh on essential that the merry-go-round comes to an end, or at least that a longer period elapses before the next change of manager. And unless results on and off the pitch are so bad as to render it unavoidable,  sacking the manager after 11 or 12 months would be a step back towards chaos again.

I've kind of said before, I'd never have given him the job, and tbh I'm not confident that he will succeed at all - most of the criticism of him, both before he was appointed and after, has been at least partly justified, if not entirely. But that's by the by. I think the club needs ot be put in a position where it's either going up this year, or very much set up to go up the year after. (ideally that was also the case last season, but the problems were too big, it was never, realistically going to happen).

So though I don't much rate the bloke (though my judgement is very far from perfect), I am in the strange position of thinking he needs to stay on the grounds that the continuation of him in place allows things to become more settled, more embedded and more stable - a platform. He's not so useless as to do lasting damage, even if he were to fail to get us up. 

[lapal_fan]

Warnock on TS this morning mentioned him when talking about it being "ludicrous" that managers have been sacked, or are under pressure this early into the season.

He said that the game has changed so much these days, that managers used to go into the board room with a 2/3 year plan, now it's more like 2 or 3 months.  Also said that if you sign a large number of players and expect to put the majority of them into the first team, you can expect half a seasons "settling in" time. 

I agree with him to be honest.  

While I also acknowledge and feel the same concerns about the way we play as others on here - I think I'm just more intermediate about it.  I don't know who we could get in to improve us drastically and without going through yet another squad build, but I do think we should be more attacking and trying to control games.  Smaller teams than us try and do it (with failure of course), but you can at least say "well, at least they're trying" - we seem to just go for the easy option of sitting deep and hitting it long, even though I know statistically you can disprove that and we play more short stuff, but I'd like to see the short stuff trying to get further up the pitch and hurting our opponents rather than short stuff in the middle of the pitch which doesn't affect the game.

If we can crack that, then I'll be happy - promotion or not (despite the repercussions of failing to do so).