Steve Bruce

[AntrimBlack]

1 hour ago, Lord Willard said:

Best start to a season since the 60s 

3 lucky wins; 2 in the CH, 1 against L2 opposition. I'll take it, but let's not dress it up too much.

[VILLAMARV]

1 hour ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

I only saw the second half but no it wasnt bad at all. It was a good game (as in entertaining, veuase it was open most of our outfield players played below average imho) and a good performance from bruce balancing rotation with the result. I wont put words in the mouths of those who dont care for Bruce, they can speak for themselves, but for me he didnt do much wrong tonight at all, in fact i rated him as "good" in the past match ratings. Shrug, funny how different fans can see the same game and have radically different conclusions. Football i guess

So you watched the bit where he'd had enough after 10mins of the second half and bought Grealish and Kodjia on then.

Just missed the bit with the 4th tier team being better than us and having a perfectly good goal robbed off them by the awful ref.

I would hope people will know I'm not one for slating Bruce too much and FWIW I think the players shoulder more of the blame for tonight's debacle than he does.

But when the only guy in here who says it was ok is admitting he only saw 50% of it and everybody else that saw 100% disagrees are you really just looking for the positives? Really?

1 hour ago, Adam2003 said:

Couldn't watch this but was it that bad?  63% possession, 12 shots... would have liked to kill off Yeovil more effectively, but 3 wins from 3 in August after a summer where we thought we were going out of business is not a bad start... I was pleased to see we had looked to control it and played a few of the young lads, so surprised to read the reactions here to SB.

Yes it was bloody awful.

No, it's not all Bruce's fault.

[AntrimBlack]

1 hour ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

I only saw the second half but no it wasnt bad at all. It was a good game (as in entertaining, veuase it was open most of our outfield players played below average imho) and a good performance from bruce balancing rotation with the result. I wont put words in the mouths of those who dont care for Bruce, they can speak for themselves, but for me he didnt do much wrong tonight at all, in fact i rated him as "good" in the past match ratings. Shrug, funny how different fans can see the same game and have radically different conclusions. Football i guess

Well, you didn't see the first half, which was abysmal, and Yeovil had a good goal disallowed. The second half was better, but that would not have been difficult.

[AntrimBlack]

1 hour ago, NurembergVillan said:

At least he's stood in front of the cameras and shown how annoyed he is with that "performance".

Absolutely not good enough, again, but he's not tried to dress it up at all.

But it was like it was nothing to do with him.

[ciggiesnbeer]

17 minutes ago, Dick said:

It's mainly because I'm fed up of being jumped on for not supporting Bruce. And also the fact that it seems to be wrong to criticise him in any way at all. So I feel October is a good time period to see where we are. I'd rather he changes things and we start winning games a little easier. This has more than one benefit; 1) Players don't overwork and so are less tired, 2) It is easier to keep winning games when in charge, rather than just with occasional luck and 3) it puts fear into other teams, leading nicely back to 1.

So I'll give him time after the summer. But if we look no better in October, that'll be two years and little progression. Time up.

Seems perfectly fair to me for what its worth and I am fairly pro Bruce. I do think we and the club need to be way less forgiving this season of our players and manager. I dont weant to sound too arrogant but we are Aston Villa, its embarassing we have not won anything for so long. That should be our goal this season and every season, WIn something.

As I mentioned above I respect Bruce's remarkable win rate I really do.. BUT we absolutely need to play a better style where we can control games more with a bit less direct wing play. We just dont have the players for it and our opponents know what we are going to do now.

To be honest I would be happy if Bruce kept his current formation and just told the players for a game or two "try and play it out the back when you can, try and keep your passes short, work the ball not the front line's legs." 

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, Kiwivillan said:

I worry that we don't get promoted again and Grealish leaves or we do get promoted and Bruce stays. 

You worry that we will get promoted

[striker]

I just can’t understand why under Bruce the team can’t seem to play consistently well for ninety minutes. It’s generally one shit half of football with something better In the other 45.

Also even though Bruce and his coaching team have had a fair amount of time the movement up front is still as terrible when he first arrived.

Seen Hourihane waving his arms in frustration a few times tonight having no forward pass on from midfield.

Edited August 14, 2018 by striker

[terrytini]

1 minute ago, striker said:

I just can’t understand why under Bruce the team can’t seem to play consistently well for ninety minutes. It’s generally one shit half of football with something thing better In the other 45.

Also even though Bruce and his coaching team have had a fair amount of time the movement up front is still as terrible when he first arrived.

Seen Hourihane waving his arms in frustration having no forward pass on from midfield a few times tonight.

I’ve not seen a team play consistently well for 90 minutes for years. I’ve seen a few come close, there were a couple in the World Cup, out of 60 odd games, I’ve seen Barcelona come close a few times, and Man City but that’s about it.

On the other hand I’ve seen countless performances from Teams across the spectrum of ability where they play quite well for a bit, but poorly for a bit, and in between for a bit.

I see no earthly reason why we should expect a Championship side to overturn that overwhelmingly common position.

[Dodgyknees]

26 minutes ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Seems perfectly fair to me for what its worth and I am fairly pro Bruce. I do think we and the club need to be way less forgiving this season of our players and manager. I dont weant to sound too arrogant but we are Aston Villa, its embarassing we have not won anything for so long. That should be our goal this season and every season, WIn something.

As I mentioned above I respect Bruce's remarkable win rate I really do.. BUT we absolutely need to play a better style where we can control games more with a bit less direct wing play. We just dont have the players for it and our opponents know what we are going to do now.

To be honest I would be happy if Bruce kept his current formation and just told the players for a game or two "try and play it out the back when you can, try and keep your passes short, work the ball not the front line's legs." 

Good post mate, and thank you.

For what it's worth, I would rather Bruce worked it all out and took us up. I don't like or want us sacking managers, it doesn't help the cause as it means we have the wrong man time and time again. We do most certainly need to play a better style, and that all leads up to and fits in with my points too, fitness and such. We spend so much time chasing shadows - even against teams like Yeovil, no offence to them. Control the game, win the game, fresher players, happier fans (although I am always happy with a win!) but we should be a lot more progressive on and off the pitch.

Fingers crossed we look really good come October and look like we are finally going to have a good season with less of the frustrations. Up the Villa.

[ciggiesnbeer]

5 minutes ago, Dick said:

Good post mate, and thank you.

For what it's worth, I would rather Bruce worked it all out and took us up. I don't like or want us sacking managers, it doesn't help the cause as it means we have the wrong man time and time again. We do most certainly need to play a better style, and that all leads up to and fits in with my points too, fitness and such. We spend so much time chasing shadows - even against teams like Yeovil, no offence to them. Control the game, win the game, fresher players, happier fans (although I am always happy with a win!) but we should be a lot more progressive on and off the pitch.

Fingers crossed we look really good come October and look like we are finally going to have a good season with less of the frustrations. Up the Villa.

I am out of likes or I would give you one (ooerrr missus!) Good post. Totally agree about chasing shadows & being more progressive. The good news is the results so far and our run in the next few weeks have given us a nice cushion to figure this out. I hope Bruce takes it.

[Dodgyknees]

30 minutes ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

I am out of likes or I would give you one (ooerrr missus!) Good post. Totally agree about chasing shadows & being more progressive. The good news is the results so far and our run in the next few weeks have given us a nice cushion to figure this out. I hope Bruce takes it.

I'm hoping for a really good run, fingers crossed. Will also mean we will likely spend some money in January if we are close enough to look like we will go up. The next few months are vital. 

[briny_ear]

4 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

It has.  I actually think we look worse.

Last season I was happy to defend him when we were winning.  It wasn't beautiful, but it was effective and for the most part we didn't really look troubled by most teams.

This season, it's very much seat of the pants stuff so far.  We could have easily lost all 3 games.

But we didn’t.

I think that’s a big difference from last season. We may well have lost all 3 games last season but we may now have a new resilience.

Sure, “style of play” is rubbish, I’ve been battered enough by the tsunami of posts about this on Villatalk to acknowledge quite happily that we are the poorest team in the league and we don’t deserve to have won any matches.

But somehow we did, and we won our league matches by scoring a lot of goals.

So that makes me happy. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by briny_ear

[TheStagMan]

11 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

But we didn’t.

I think that’s a big difference from last season. We may well have lost all 3 games last season but we may now have a new resilience.

Sure, “style of play” is rubbish, I’ve been battered enough by the tsunami of posts about this on Villatalk to acknowledge quite happily that we are the poorest team in the league and we don’t deserve to have won any matches.

But somehow we did, and we won our league matches by scoring a lot of goals.

So that makes me happy. 

Good for you. I am happy that you are happy. Will you still be happy when we start losing games?

[Tomaszk]

1 hour ago, TheStagMan said:

Good for you. I am happy that you are happy. Will you still be happy when we start losing games?

It'll be the players that aren't good enough then.

[Dave J]

8 hours ago, Zatman said:

No. We spent CHampionship fees not Premier LEague

This summer alone

Everton 85 million

Fulham 90 million

Leicester 90 million

West Ham 90 million

 

We spent nothing like that

 

We spent a huge amount on wages last summer - premiership wages at that! Bruce had plenty of resource at his disposal last summer, more than enough to negotiate promotion 

[Stephen_Evans]

2 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

It'll be the players that aren't good enough then.

Don’t forget the “hysterical” fans!

[Taxahunter]

9 hours ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Winning manager recognises flaws and says he wants to improve.

I mean, I get some folks are not impressed by Bruce's style of play, I want it to get better as well, but its not like he went into a paul lambert style deluded victory lap. Also with Aston Villa by no means was tonight's win certain, god knows we have proven we are well capable of losing to this kind of opposition in recent years.

 

Maybe my expectations have just been worn down by the relentless crap we have endured for the best part of a decade but I am taking the positives from tonight.

Yes, but how many times has he said he wants to correct these flaws and mistake, but nothing happens, they keep popping up, he keeps mentioning them.

[eholm]

Oh dear! Bloody woeful!! Again Bruce honestly says it’s not good enough and we will get better. 

How many times have we heard this rhetoric from him!!?? God man!! Long hoof balls from full backs to our 5 ft tall CF.... I mean come on!! These performances are shocking and demonstrate that he is not setting up the team correctly. I know posters will say that it’s not his fault and the players are to blame....well, football doesn’t work like that and he HAS to take the blame and be fully accountable. 2 years on and very little (apart from team spirit) has improved. That will get us so far but he is not getting the best out of the players he has and so needs to move on. Nice bloke and he really cares but just not good enough, full stop. 

[Mark Albrighton]

I share a fair few of the concerns on here. We’ll be found out against the top half teams playing like we have done. We probably haven’t played “well” since the Boro away leg and before that it was the 4-0 win against Ipswich I guess.

I have the feeling that the upcoming Brentford game will probably be the first real litmus test of the season (with all due respect to Ipswich).

As ever, I know Bruce can get the team playing well, it’s just frustrating that it’s so inconsistent.

[New_Hope]

If you don't change....you'll always get what you always got.