Steve Bruce

[TRO]

2 hours ago, hippo said:

Bruce's forte is 'Ship Steadying' IMO.

You have to look at the sides that bounce straight into the prem - in general they seem to be sides who are relegated by a whisker - who are able to keep most of the squad together for the following season.

We didn't get relegated by a whisker - and keeping the squad together just wasn't an option for so many reasons. Throw in the turmoil at the club (we had basically replaced our starting 11 2 close seasons on the trott) and you can see we didn't fit the profile of a club who was going to bounce back at the first attempt. Basically it was a major rebuild with all the risks that entails. RDM just couldn't stop the rot. Bruce has come in and he has got a degree of stability and the rot appears to have been halted.

That said I do think 'no midfield' is being massively overstated. Jedinak is a top performer, Bacuna is more than decent, Gardner is grafter with a good shot on him, and westwood is ok as squad player - we have youngsters in Lyden and Tishbola. Now before you all start hammering your keyboards about gardner and westwood - Im not saying they are fantastic players - but they wouldn't look out of place in many championship sides - Im saying rather than 'no midfield' those 2 are borderline adequate this level - coupled with others we should have enough in there to give Burton Albion (for example) a run for their money.

I like Bruce and was mightily relieved when we got him - if he does have a weakness it is getting his teams to plunder enough goals. So a couple in midfield in jan may help us - but I am not expecting it to be the cure for all ills. IMO getting Ross Mccormack firing on all cylinders would improve us more.

Xia has provided the cash, but lets not forget where we were even with Xia's millions to assemble a promotion winning squad over the summer was a tall order. I hope and think we can scramble into the play offs - If we fall just short Bruce has done enough to have another shot at it. You have to look at QPR and Fulham as to where we were - Fulham are now a credible force in this division - QPR are still in a right mess.  

 

 

 

It was like a ship with a hole as big as a tank in the side of it.....so I tend to agree on that.

midfield, no its poor.....how it's described is subjective.

Jedinak has been a rock, but the rest has been poor....very poor.

personally I would not swap Bruce for McLaren.

plundering goals for me is a subject of progression and we have not got there yet.

He has been here 5 minutes.....it will come when the balance reappears, but we are still too disjointed at present due to weakness that cannot be just swept under the carpet.

 

 

[markavfc40]

6 hours ago, Richard said:

Mark I've not deleted you post for no other reason than long multi quoted threads are a pain.

look its your opinion, some of which I have a degree of sympathy for but fair play to you. The point I am making is that I do not think Bruce has done as brilliantly as some people are making out, I do not believe that he cannot be criticised and I have cited an example of a manager, many of whom would not want him at our club so I accept the comparison is unpallatable for some people, who has done better in similar circumstances. Does that mean Bruce has been crap or I think he has been crap? No. But what it does mean is I am a little more sober about his performance than others on this site.

I am not sure of the merits of bringing up McClaren and using him as a yardstick to judge Bruce by, given they inherited different clubs, but I think you make a good point here in that McClaren would not have been wanted by many at the club and would have perhaps been judged differently by some but be under no illusions a number of our supporters also didn't want Bruce. I don't know maybe you were one of them and had someone you favoured more been employed you'd have judged him more favourably after the same run of results. I have certainly made the error of having a downer on a manager before he arrived in Houllier and it clouded my judgement going forward.

I suppose the crux of it is,regardless of who the manager who replaced RDM was, what was the most you would have realistically expected given the squad they would be inheriting, the poor run of results when they arrived, the tendency to concede late goals, the mental impact of playing for a club that had not won away for 14 months, growing frustration amongst supporters at a poor start to another season on top of the previous 5 years of struggle and the fact that despite a poor start there was still huge expectation at our football club which brings an added pressure.

Taking all of the above into consideration, which combined are all pretty much unique to our club, then whoever was the manager I struggle to see at this stage how anyone could have expected much more than 2 points per game, the new man taking more than double the points his predecessor took in the same amount of games and putting to bed 14 months of failing to win away and turning around our tendency to concede late goals to now doing the total opposite.

Managers going into other clubs will be inheriting a total different set of circumstances to what Bruce inherited here. The points on the board may be similar but take the time to look a little deeper and not much else will be the same. For that reason it is best to judge Bruce against what we know was wrong here rather than against what someone is doing somewhere else.

Edited December 20, 2016 by markavfc40

[TRO]

14 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I am not sure of the merits of bringing up McClaren and using him as a yardstick to judge Bruce by, given they inherited different clubs, but I think you make a good point here in that McClaren would not have been wanted by many at the club and would have perhaps been judged differently by some but be under no illusions a number of our supporters also didn't want Bruce. I don't know maybe you were one of them and had someone you favoured more had been employed you'd have judged him more favourably after the same run of results. I have certainly made the error of having a downer on a manager before he arrived in Houllier and it clouded my judgement going forward.

I suppose the crux of it is,regardless of who the manager who replaced RDM was, what was the most you would have realistically expected given the squad they would be inheriting, the poor run of results when they arrived, the tendency to concede late goals, the mental impact of playing for a club that had not won away for 14 months, growing frustration amongst supporters at a poor start to another season on top of the previous 5 years of struggle and the fact that despite a poor start there was still huge expectation at our football club which brings an added pressure.

Taking all of the above into consideration, which combined are all pretty much unique to our club, then whoever was the manager I struggle to see at this stage how anyone could have expected much more than 2 points per game, the new man taking more than double the points his predecessor took in the same amount of games and putting to bed 14 months of failing to win away and turning around our tendency to concede late goals to now doing the total opposite.

Managers going into other clubs will be inheriting a total different set of circumstances to what Bruce inherited here. The points on the board may be similar but take the time to look a little deeper and not much else will be the same. For that reason it is best to judge Bruce against what we know was wrong here rather than against what someone is doing somewhere else.

Spot on Mark.....you saved me typing.

if someone never fancied his appointment.....chances are they never will.

some of the reluctants will turn up every stone to find a reason to justify their original thoughts.

I guess some fans who never fancied Ron Saunders, would have had a moment for themselves in the last game at Arsenal in 1981.....until they found out Middlesborough won at home to Ipswich......and then mixed feelings kicked in.

[AJ]

9 hours ago, VillaCas said:

For me SB is a top-end championship / bottom end Premiership manager.  On his appointment there seemed to be two schools of thought - some were enthusiastically in favour with the view that if he could get us out of the championship we could address his limitations then. I was in the second camp who was against his appointment and wanted someone, perhaps less experienced but with more potential

On the face of it the first scenario is the safe one and the second scenario a riskier one, however, if our ambition is to be more than a yo-yo club I think that we needed to take that risk. Let's imagine that SB does get us up this season - he will be (rightly) hailed as a hero and there would be no appetite or fair reason to look to replace him. Money will be spent and we will sign the kind of workmanlike player that SB always signs. We will struggle around the lower end of the table until we get relegated or SB is replaced. We will then be in another of our endless transition phases and the whole sorry cycle will begin again

I've no problem with Bruce as a person - he's a good guy and so far, he has come in and done well (as we probably expected him to). I don't think he has done anything exceptional, given the amount of money spent, even our unbalanced side should really be one of the top championship sides - it was very poor management by RDM that was the cause of our problems.

It's early days and SB has not yet had the opportunity to shape the squad so criticism must be tempered massively, but we are being extremely fortunate and in the main relying on individual moments of good play. Performances in the main have been quite poor. People will say that results are all that matter and at the moment that is quite right but soon we will be looking for more and I'm concerned that SB's style of play will not deliver

To clarify, Bruce needs to be given time to bring players in and shape his own style but I worry now that when he does many will be extremely disappointed

Yes, good post , Cas, however you may be foretelling a bit with what you say what Bruce might do if he gets us promoted. You are correct with what you drew upon from what Bruce has done in the past, but the difference maker which I think might be is that Bruce should receive a decent budget from Tony, as opposed to what he has gotten from other teams he has gotten promoted in the past. Mo money, mo options, so to speak.

I wasnt 100% sold on Bruce, but what did appeal him to me, was the hope that we would go back to basics football, which I believed was something we were missing, and something which we dearly needed. I believe he is achieving that. Last season, under two and a half managers ( Eric Black wasnt really a coach. He was more of a mini bus), other than a pinch of games, no team on the planet played like the way we did. Before anyone jumps on me, that is not a compliment. We played in a way with our slow build up backwards sideways predictable down the wing cross the ball in hope that the striker is awake in the box and can somehow get the ball past the alert and ready 3 or 4 defenders and GK and maybe get a goal style of play, that was in no way a design for a win. SB, for the most part, has called BS and changed that.

As for what happens in the future with Bruce, I prefer to wait and see. There are alot of crazy x factors in football, and its a chaos theorem enthusiast's wet dream.

[TRO]

He can only win the next game in front of him and see where it takes him. In my view that is all that any manager can do.

There are so many factors that can challenge any argument any of us have about the future.

So many top managers have failed to live up to the hype....like Van Gaal.

then conversely managers like Tony Pulis who have been labelled anti expansive for the want of a better word has shown the virtues of the other side of the game.

We can't all emulate Barcelona, some of us have to settle for Athletico Madrid.

I do actually think some of the modern day fans may have been at odds with the style of the 80/81 or 81/82 sides.....because the 77/78 side might have been much more up their street.

Edited December 20, 2016 by TRO

[TRO]

I am not trying to controversial for the sake of it, but I think the very reason that some fans don't fancy him as manager are the very same reasons why he will be successful and why we need him.

Ron Saunders was never perceived as a manager that could challenge Bill Shankly or Bobby Robson, he was never seen as a George Graham or a Don Revie or Howard Kendall.....It took us all some time to see that we had something special and with Tony Barton and Roy McLaren it became very special.

its not what we think managers can do.....Its what they do, do.

Edited December 20, 2016 by TRO

[Stevo985]

24 minutes ago, TRO said:

I am not trying to controversial for the sake of it, but I think the very reason that some fans don't fancy him as manager are the very same reasons why he will be successful and why we need him.

I think the reason some fans don't want him is because his ceiling isn't as high as their ambition for Aston Villa.

Which is fair enough, but I've been saying for years that we need to change our approach to managerial appointments. Gone are the days of finding a manager for the next 10 years plus

[VillaChris]

23 hours ago, Richard said:

18 months ago in that time 13 have left and 12 arrived 

Most of those were squad players.

The core of the squad is still the same as what he left them in May 2015....Carson,Chrstie, Keogh, Bryson, Will Hughes, Russell, Ince. He signed Bent aswell.

I think it's completely different to Bruce particularly as we know Derby are a strong team at this level and know the division inside out. We obviously didn't and SB has given us championship nous in how to grind out results and pick up points on a regular basis, all beyond RDM.

[VillaChris]

1 hour ago, AJ said:

Yes, good post , Cas, however you may be foretelling a bit with what you say what Bruce might do if he gets us promoted. You are correct with what you drew upon from what Bruce has done in the past, but the difference maker which I think might be is that Bruce should receive a decent budget from Tony, as opposed to what he has gotten from other teams he has gotten promoted in the past. Mo money, mo options, so to speak.

I wasnt 100% sold on Bruce, but what did appeal him to me, was the hope that we would go back to basics football, which I believed was something we were missing, and something which we dearly needed. I believe he is achieving that. Last season, under two and a half managers ( Eric Black wasnt really a coach. He was more of a mini bus), other than a pinch of games, no team on the planet played like the way we did. Before anyone jumps on me, that is not a compliment. We played in a way with our slow build up backwards sideways predictable down the wing cross the ball in hope that the striker is awake in the box and can somehow get the ball past the alert and ready 3 or 4 defenders and GK and maybe get a goal style of play, that was in no way a design for a win. SB, for the most part, has called BS and changed that.

As for what happens in the future with Bruce, I prefer to wait and see. There are alot of crazy x factors in football, and its a chaos theorem enthusiast's wet dream.

Bruce's record in the prem is pretty mixed and actually gets worse the more money he's given. That was the trend anyway at SHA, Sunderland and Hull.

So I wouldn't be hugely optimistic we'd suddenly be playing better football if he was given a good budget.

That's all years away though. For where we are now he is comfortably the best man for the job given his previous record.

[VillaChris]

30 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I think the reason some fans don't want him is because his ceiling isn't as high as their ambition for Aston Villa.

Which is fair enough, but I've been saying for years that we need to change our approach to managerial appointments. Gone are the days of finding a manager for the next 10 years plus

Most important thing the club can do before we return to the prem is getting everything set up properly behind the scenes so we have a proper infastructure in place to withstand managerial changes.

A model club for us should be Southampton. A club that since promotion in 2012 have changed manager four times and made numerous sales of key players each summer but keep finishing in the top half of the league?

Why because they have joined up thinking with regards player recruitment (Nathan Redmond said in an interview the other day he didn't join Saints due to who the manager was but more what the club could offer him in terms of his role in the team) and also a great youth academy.

That's been two major problems for us, a terrible scatter gun transfer recruitment and our youth system. Until recently we've funnelled through plenty of academy players into the first team squad but very few of them kick on, we sell them for knock down fees and then we watch two of them play key parts in title wins (Albrighton and Cahill).

That's two things I'll be judging the owners decisions on. If he gets both write suddenly getting in a brilliant manager isn't quite the be all and end all. Watford would be another example.

[NeilS]

12 hours ago, LakotaDakota said:

Last couple of years? We did that in the summer

Haha, I was being kind, I think we also bought virtually a whole team in Timmy's window

 

[VillaCas]

23 hours ago, blandy said:

But I think the bit I've quoted is kind of not really right. It can't be because it's just an imagined potential future. We cannot know who he might sign if we went up, what resources he'd get. We cannot know the team would struggle, and to be fair, even if we did - well basically everyone struggles when they go up these days - It's almost harder to stay up than get up. That's not really a fair stick to beat SB with, IMO.

Anyway, now he's here, he's done a decent job so far given the unbalanced squad. There are some mysteries and unfathomable selections/non-selections, but seeing as I don't go to the training ground I can't know why they are made, or what would have happened if Gabby had remained frozen out, or Tschibola had played more. End result is we've done pretty decently so far. It's not pretty, but it's solid.

He's the manager, he's presented himself well, turned the team round and started to turn the club round, so I'm not gonna fuss about me not wanting him at the time he got the job. It's done and he's doing alright.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if we were to make the play-offs, and if we do, we'll have done very well indeed.

Surely a massive proportion of the comments on here are based on "imagined potential futures".  Whenever a manager is appointed it is because the club imagine a positive potential future with that manager. My post merely summised what I believe the future is under SB and the drawbacks and problems that that may bring

I was very careful to make clear that so far SB has delivered what was expected of him - he's not surpassed expecations in my opinion but he has delivered the required reset in performances that our unbalanced but highly expensive and highly skilled (for the championship) squad should be producing

My point, which either I didn't make clear or you didn't pick up on, was in response to a comment about styles of play and looked forward to a time when supporters might begin to be less grateful for merely points on the board and put more pressure on SB to produce more attractive football and a more engaging style of play

To be absolutely clear - I like SB, he's a good guy, He still needs to be judged when he has bought some of his own players into the squad but already he's delivered the turnaround that was demanded and hopefully will eventually guide us back to the Premiership. For many that will be sufficient - for me he is a short term fix for something that needed a long term solution. Time will tell

[DCJonah]

If Bruce gets us promoted, he'll be rightly given the chance to move us forward. If he fails I have no doubt he will be replaced with someone better. 

It's not even an issue for me, Bruce is a specialist at getting teams into the prem. We don't need him to do the rest, we can improve on him as we would with players. 

[dn1982]

43 minutes ago, VillaCas said:

Surely a massive proportion of the comments on here are based on "imagined potential futures".  Whenever a manager is appointed it is because the club imagine a positive potential future with that manager. My post merely summised what I believe the future is under SB and the drawbacks and problems that that may bring

I was very careful to make clear that so far SB has delivered what was expected of him - he's not surpassed expecations in my opinion but he has delivered the required reset in performances that our unbalanced but highly expensive and highly skilled (for the championship) squad should be producing

My point, which either I didn't make clear or you didn't pick up on, was in response to a comment about styles of play and looked forward to a time when supporters might begin to be less grateful for merely points on the board and put more pressure on SB to produce more attractive football and a more engaging style of play

To be absolutely clear - I like SB, he's a good guy, He still needs to be judged when he has bought some of his own players into the squad but already he's delivered the turnaround that was demanded and hopefully will eventually guide us back to the Premiership. For many that will be sufficient - for me he is a short term fix for something that needed a long term solution. Time will tell

We are getting the long term solution in place. Look at the work Round is doing. We firstly needed to get back in the promotion race which Bruce has done. He now has a window to put a bit of a stamp on the squad. If he sorts out the positions we need we will make the Playoffs which can be a lottery. I think Bruce will get us up if not this year we will get automatic next season. How high and how far he can take us I'm not sure but only when the wins run out will we start talking about style of play. We weren't the best side to watch under MON but we won a lot and it was exciting. Getting behind the scenes right is as important as on the pitch so far it's all coming together nicely. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, VillaCas said:

My point, which either I didn't make clear or you didn't pick up on, was in response to a comment about styles of play and looked forward to a time when supporters might begin to be less grateful for merely points on the board and put more pressure on SB to produce more attractive football and a more engaging style of play

I think I got what you were saying, I hope so. My response was to point out that while I share many of your views on him, I (just me) personally think that if Dr X is indeed as serious as he says, the circs Bruce would find himself having if he got us up might be very different from his times at Wigan, Hull, Small Heath, Sunderland where those clubs were very limited in terms of how high they could go [Sunderland (like Villa) has potential, but it has not been well run by the Ellis Short, the owner]. Basically the "rules" might or might not be different if we go up, so past performance might be less of an indicator of how SB might do. Like you, I suspect he would still be limited in what he could achieve, but because of the potential for changed circus, I don't think it's (for me) fair to kind of suggest he'll do badly if we go up.

Does that make sense? probably not.

[TRO]

21 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I think the reason some fans don't want him is because his ceiling isn't as high as their ambition for Aston Villa.

Which is fair enough, but I've been saying for years that we need to change our approach to managerial appointments. Gone are the days of finding a manager for the next 10 years plus

but there is no ceiling.....he hasn't got a ceiling....its ficticious.

just like Saunders and Ranieri hadn't got ceilings.

He only has history and that history relates to the circumstances at those clubs.

I agree with your comments of finding a manager for 10 years.

Edited December 21, 2016 by TRO

[Villarocker]

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 16:15, Richard said:

Mark I've not deleted you post for no other reason than long multi quoted threads are a pain.

look its your opinion, some of which I have a degree of sympathy for but fair play to you. The point I am making is that I do not think Bruce has done as brilliantly as some people are making out, I do not believe that he cannot be criticised and I have cited an example of a manager, many of whom would not want him at our club so I accept the comparison is unpallatable for some people, who has done better in similar circumstances. Does that mean Bruce has been crap or I think he has been crap? No. But what it does mean is I am a little more sober about his performance than others on this site.

I think it's a bit unfair to compare what Mclaren and Bruce have done since they've been in their current jobs. 

Mclaren has gone back to a club that he's very familiar and comfortable with, he has worked with some of the players previously at Derby so already knows what players are made of and where best to play them also, he probably signed some of those players. Finally, the bulk of the team was already in place last season so have a lot of experience of playing together. 

Bruce came in to unfamiliar surroundings, the players are not his signings and so he would have had to develop a knowledge of their best positions, he's yet to sign any of his players and, the players are by and large new to each other and haven't had that experience of playing together that Derby have. 

I think it is fair to assume that Mclaren had the easier of the two tasks 

Edited December 21, 2016 by villarocker

[TRO]

4 hours ago, VillaCas said:

Surely a massive proportion of the comments on here are based on "imagined potential futures".  Whenever a manager is appointed it is because the club imagine a positive potential future with that manager. My post merely summised what I believe the future is under SB and the drawbacks and problems that that may bring

I was very careful to make clear that so far SB has delivered what was expected of him - he's not surpassed expecations in my opinion but he has delivered the required reset in performances that our unbalanced but highly expensive and highly skilled (for the championship) squad should be producing

My point, which either I didn't make clear or you didn't pick up on, was in response to a comment about styles of play and looked forward to a time when supporters might begin to be less grateful for merely points on the board and put more pressure on SB to produce more attractive football and a more engaging style of play

To be absolutely clear - I like SB, he's a good guy, He still needs to be judged when he has bought some of his own players into the squad but already he's delivered the turnaround that was demanded and hopefully will eventually guide us back to the Premiership. For many that will be sufficient - for me he is a short term fix for something that needed a long term solution. Time will tell

You have a very valid point about the quality of play....In my view we are still in the early stages of WIP.

I have no doubt it will come....when the team can build their confidence on a better balance and a bit of team continuity can be achieved.

I believe the amount of changes is borne out of SB trying to get points any way he knows.

I have been really pleased in the turn around in points, but I am not blind to some of the poor aspects of play......I would guess he isn't blind to it either.

ps I don't think one window will fix it either, but I might be pleasantly surprised.

Edited December 21, 2016 by TRO

[Grasshopper]

So far Steve Bruce has proved an awful lot so far.

He took an unbalanced squad and got a response & Results immediately.

A few hiccups are not surprising even if they are by his own doing.

I believe that IF the JanWin circumstances allow him to bring in his priority targets he will get us to the playoffs.

I would not be suprised if he got "very little" in, that he'd still get us to the POs

My only real worry is of how strong he can strengthen us (circumstances dictating) to be able to match AND beat our PO opponents.

I can see SB getting us to the POs with what we have, but to beat 2 of

Reading, Hudds, Leeds, ShefW, Derby, Norwich and Fulham

is 1 step too far.

Judging on the Shite that may come down, I'd fancy us for the title next season if we dont go up this season.

Whenever we would get to the PL and its SB who gets us there, I think we will be such a different ball game that noone could honestly have a clue at what calibre of player we could attract. And as we've seen twice now, its not what you spend, its who you spend it on

Bruce has proved everything so far, long may it continue.

If and when the time comes I hope he goes with dignity.

[Demitri_C]

I keep forgetting bruce is on a rolling contract we really have no idea if he will even be here next summer