Mic09 Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 11 hours ago, Keyblade said: It's like you hire a contractor to help build your destroyed antique mansion back up. You bought a lot of expensive parts, even bought them off your neighbours for large sums. You hired one guy, but quickly found out he didn't know what he was doing and so you decided hire the guy with the pedigree. He has a track record of doing this, I mean he built 4 homes back up which is unrivaled. Yes his methods seem to be outdated, but he gets results and that's all you need right now. By the end, it becomes clear he just can't do it. Not only that, but he ends up leaving your place in arguably worse shape than he found it in. Then on top of that, he insulted you regularly for having the nerve to question his methods and effectiveness. Now a year later, your house is built. It's in better shape than its been in for a decade. The new guy you hired, a relative, only took a fraction of the time and resources using largely the same materials and tools the previous guy did...and all with humility and a smile on his face. Sometimes you think to yourself out loud, man, remember that asshole that took all your money to restore your mansion, but instead ended up trashing it and insulting you for it. Then your brother chimes in "Yeah but he nearly built it back up though. He was there or thereabouts, literally just one brick away from doing it. Why do you ignore that part?". And you just give him that look like Bunk from The Wire. That's this thread. I think your analogy is wrong. You hire a contractor to help you build your destroyed antique mansion. You bought a lot of expensive parts, even bought them off your neighbours for large sums. You hired one guy, but quickly found out he didn't know what he was doing and so you decided hire the guy with the pedigree. He has a track record of doing this, I mean he built 4 homes back up which is unrivaled. Yes his methods seem to be outdated, but he gets results and that's all you need right now. By the end, he has built solid foundations. He brought in a number of new features which you use up to today and these are the Crown Jewels in your beautiful new home. He did all the brickwork, he did all the hard work in laying foundations. However, it's clear that he can't finish the house off. What you need is someone with more energy and someone who cares a bit more about finishing your mansion as a long term project rather than just a quick pay off. The contractor isn't happy about it, but at the end of the day, screw them. It's your home. Now, a year later, the house is built. The new guy made some tweaks in plans, however we will never know how good he would have been at laying bricks. He only has a few short term jobs to finish the house off and he did a VERY good job of it. But who knows how he would have dealt without the use of the new features such as your ElEvations or McBricks. (Credit for the puns please) Sometimes you think to yourself, that guy took a lot of money and he couldn't have finished the house off. A lot of time and a lot of effort wasted. Later on you found out, that if he had finished the house on time, a year ago as he planned, the result might have been the investors pulling out due to high cost and project requirements. It's a good job the original guy turned out to only do half the job, because the new guy gets on great with the investors and finished off the house which was built in 75% by the other guy. Both contractors played their part, and both were needed. The new guy did the things the old contractor messed up, sure, but majority of the brickwork was already there. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Designer1 Posted June 28, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted June 28, 2019 Is it ok if I acknowledge that he did some good things, but still think he's a bit of a classless nob? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mic09 Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 2 minutes ago, Designer1 said: Is it ok if I acknowledge that he did some good things, but still think he's a bit of a classless nob? We can almost agree then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted June 28, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted June 28, 2019 5 minutes ago, Designer1 said: Is it ok if I acknowledge that he did some good things, but still think he's a bit of a classless nob? Some good things? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 1 hour ago, Stevo985 said: He's not even really defended him He's literally criticised him in that post but just disagreed with the leaving us in a worse state part. This is why it seems like there are a few posters with an obsession. You've ignored the part where he's slated Bruce, and the part where he's made a pretty reasonable post with lots of points to back up his opinion and rather than just take it as a difference of opinion you've decided it's Kurtsimonw trying desperately to defend Bruce. It really does seem like if you don't hate everything Bruce has ever done then you're apparently desperate to defend him at every opportunity rather than, you know, holding a different opinion. He defended him on the point we were discussing. So not sure how I was wrong with saying that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Mic09 said: I think your analogy is wrong. You hire a contractor to help you build your destroyed antique mansion. You bought a lot of expensive parts, even bought them off your neighbours for large sums. You hired one guy, but quickly found out he didn't know what he was doing and so you decided hire the guy with the pedigree. He has a track record of doing this, I mean he built 4 homes back up which is unrivaled. Yes his methods seem to be outdated, but he gets results and that's all you need right now. By the end, he has built solid foundations. He brought in a number of new features which you use up to today and these are the Crown Jewels in your beautiful new home. He did all the brickwork, he did all the hard work in laying foundations. However, it's clear that he can't finish the house off. What you need is someone with more energy and someone who cares a bit more about finishing your mansion as a long term project rather than just a quick pay off. The contractor isn't happy about it, but at the end of the day, screw them. It's your home. Now, a year later, the house is built. The new guy made some tweaks in plans, however we will never know how good he would have been at laying bricks. He only has a few short term jobs to finish the house off and he did a VERY good job of it. But who knows how he would have dealt without the use of the new features such as your ElEvations or McBricks. (Credit for the puns please) Sometimes you think to yourself, that guy took a lot of money and he couldn't have finished the house off. A lot of time and a lot of effort wasted. Later on you found out, that if he had finished the house on time, a year ago as he planned, the result might have been the investors pulling out due to high cost and project requirements. It's a good job the original guy turned out to only do half the job, because the new guy gets on great with the investors and finished off the house which was built in 75% by the other guy. Both contractors played their part, and both were needed. The new guy did the things the old contractor messed up, sure, but majority of the brickwork was already there. Utter bullshit. What were these solid foundations? A goalkeeper and cb pair that needed replacing as soon as possible? Loan players that we'd have no chance of keeping had Smith not performed a miracle? Aging players with contracts running out? Yeah really solid foundations there. Imagine we hadn't got promoted. Would anyone have the nerve to suggest bruce built solid foundations when we sold grealish and mcginn and had no chance of signing any of our loan signings? Of course they wouldn't. Promotion has allowed this idea that Bruce did a good job for us. Which is laughable really. The good things he did were easily cancelled out by the bad. Edited June 28, 2019 by DCJonah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 1 hour ago, Tomaszk said: If we hadn't have gone up, same people would be in here absolving him. Giving Smith equal share of the blame as Brucie. Would not have surprised me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurtsimonw Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 7 minutes ago, DCJonah said: Imagine we hadn't got promoted. Would anyone have the nerve to suggest bruce built solid foundations when we sold grealish and mcginn and had no chance of signing any of our loan signings? Of course they wouldn't. Imagine Bruce kept his job, and we won the league rather than need the playoffs. Then The World Billions lottery was created, and Steve Bruce won that, then pumped a billion quid in to signings in January. We won every game 10-0 with the likes of Mbappe reaching 100 goals for the season. Then this summer we bought United, City and Liverpool to be our reserve teams. Would anyone have the nerve to say he wasn't the greatest thing ever to happen to the club? Of course they wouldn't. But that's an imaginary World that hasn't happened. When you literally need to make up a story to fit your argument, you're just proving the opposition point. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mic09 Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 18 minutes ago, DCJonah said: Utter bullshit. What were these solid foundations? A goalkeeper and cb pair that needed replacing as soon as possible? Loan players that we'd have no chance of keeping had Smith not performed a miracle? Aging players with contracts running out? Yeah really solid foundations there. Imagine we hadn't got promoted. Would anyone have the nerve to suggest bruce built solid foundations when we sold grealish and mcginn and had no chance of signing any of our loan signings? Of course they wouldn't. Promotion has allowed this idea that Bruce did a good job for us. Which is laughable really. The good things he did were easily cancelled out by the bad. Let's run it point by point. Nyland hasn't worked out, sure. But last season he got us the very solid Johnstone who many fans wanted to stay. If the takeover happened sooner, I guess we would have signed him full time. Loan players got us the promotion. Abraham, ElGhazi and Axel were the foundation of that team. Not that I would, but couldn't you use the same argument on Mings should we have not gone up? So should we blame Smith if for some reason we don't sign Mings? I think we should be thanking him for bringing him in for 6 months, but maybe I'm a glass half full kind of guy. Ageing players? Sure. But Whelan was a very smart player for us. Elmo was very solid. When talking about ageing players we should also mention Terry, who Bruce got on board. Like it or not, Bruce was behind getting John Terry to Aston Villa. I think these are solid foundations. Don't get me wrong, I am happy he went. But he wasn't a disaster. I don't think he was particularly good either. He was a good move at the time and went at the right time too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 He started off well, build a good team, good spirit. Then when he has no plan b or c, when he couldn't turn things around and when he realised he couldn't turn things around, he blames the fans. At that point, he becomes fair game for insults from me, and I'll keep on going on about how shit he was for us from April 2018 till his sacking. With the backing he had "Hogan", he still moaned he was given pennies. Prick. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lapal_fan Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 Smith has done a great job (obviously), but I think us going up is such an incredible quantity of things going in our favor, that his control of that quantity is so small that I just can't give all the credit to him... If you read that sentence, it sounds incredibly harsh, which I promise is not the case (we're lucky have him!). But winning at Rotherham when a man down, jack scoring the amazing goal, us winning 10 games on the bounce, the whole Leeds saga, beating blues away with a shit goal and Grealish getting punched, McGinn and Jack working well together, Hourihane scoring when we really needed it, Jack coming back from injury on the cusp of play offs disappearing, beating Wednesday in the last 90 seconds after 80 minutes of garbage, somehow drawing 3-3 with Sheff Utd when we played 75 minutes of garbage, scraping past Millwall, Bristol going to shit when we battered them.. it's just too much stuff to say "that's because of Smith". I actually think that winning run is more down the players experiencing last seasons shit show in the play off finals. Jack knew he'd be gone this season, Hourihane has always wanted to go up, but looked like he did in the final 3rd of the season, Whelan played better than he did in the 18 months previous for all but the West Brom game, Tammy didn't score as often as the first half of the season but was still valuable. To me, it just felt inevitable about 4 games into the winning streak after Stoke 1-1 when we were **** shit, then amazing.. Bruce had to go, last season, he was beyond shit, but in the season we lost the play off final, we were essentially Derby this year and Fulham were us. They had all the momentum, there was a feel good and again, unimaginable amounts of things went their way. I was absolutely certain before the Fulham game we'd already lost. I don't gamble, but I'd have been a few quid better off if I did. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 3 hours ago, kurtsimonw said: Wouldn't that be Xia/RDM, not Bruce? I see a lot of people talking about him "leaving us in a worse place than when he took over". We had less than 1 point per game, and just 1 win when he took over, a quarter of the way through the season. Given he lost his job at the exact same stage of the season, the comparison becomes a lot easier. Let's forget that he had much less money to spend than his predecessor, and that the club at the top was in a much worse state - because these things will just be labelled "excuses", anyway. We h ad 50% more points, nearly double the goals, 3x the wins, we were left 2 points from the playoffs rather than the 10 when he took over from RDM. Players he signed in a cash-strapped summer were players that were the foundation for our promotion. Yes, I'm glad he was sacked. Yes, I think his football was too negative to get the best use out of these players. But left us in a worse state than when he took over? Christ. I don't care if people don't like the guy, or don't rate the guy. But why let facts get in the way of a good moan? Let it go, it's becoming an obsession. As @Stevo985 says, this thread is almost always bumped by someone who can't seem to let go of Bruce and slagging him off. But apparently those that don't think about him all day every day, and don't hate him with all of their being, are the ones that have the problem. It's hard to compare because RDM had only 11 games at the helm, so I wasn't talking about points tally or wins or anything else...just the shape of the squad, its health and effect on our finances. It's unfair to talk about results when Bruce had 2 years on him. Like you said, Smith and Bruce took over at almost identical times so it's easy to compare. When Bruce took over he had a squad that as a whole was strong but was comparatively weak in midfield. It was still a serviceable midfield mind you, but it was weak. Compare that to Smith when he took over, who also had a similarly strong squad, but was completely lacking a defence. All we had was 1 hobbled CB in the whole team and like 30 RBs. This was Bruce's doing. He also increased the average age of the team since he took over, so in the end you can definitely argue that not only did he not really improve the squad overall, he weakened it. If we didn't get promoted this season we would have truly been in the shit largely because of our transfer policy which to be fair Xia and Wyness shares the blame on. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewiek2 Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 (edited) Bruce did what he always does at clubs. When he came in and worked with what he had and could hoover the loan market and pay good wages he steadied the ship. Once he had to, well, wheel and deal, bring his own players in and work to a budget he crumbled and the wheels fell off. Give him a group of players and no control over transfers and he'll do a job, get the team organised. Let him control transfers and he'll mostly buy shit and imbalance his sides. Always has, always will. When he took the job at Villa nose mate of mine said to me "Bruce will do alright for you until he signs his own players, then he'll lose the plot as he'll not know how to play them, just that it's either someone who's agents a mate or they have a reputation and he'll sign them without even knowing how they'll fit in to his system." Edited June 28, 2019 by stewiek2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 9 hours ago, Rob182 said: Here’s a separate question @TRO. During Bruce’s time here, did he ever praise Di Matteo for any of his signings that Bruce utilised? I can’t recall him doing so. I’m not saying Bruce had no positives in his management, but honestly, the man is just an arse. If you think that, no one is going to change your opinion.....I don't know him personally, so you could be right, but folk I know who have met him say different. I understand your point about Di Matteo, but I don't think the comparisons is the same, RDM was not with us for long, we went through that changing managers scenario, Maybe he didn't feel so committed to say What Dean did, Maybe he didn't think it was appropriate, when we was shipping goals for fun and he himself handed over a team the won 24 games in the season and just missed out on the final....personally I don't think there was any comparison. Look you are driving me to praise him when in fact, I wasn't too keen on his brand of football anyway and I am much happier with Dean. Steve did a job of stabilising us, no more no less( personally, I was grateful for that at the time) until the financial disclosure nearly finished us.......We have a manager now, who I believe can drive us on and owners who look like supporting him.....lets just be grateful for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 4 hours ago, kurtsimonw said: Imagine Bruce kept his job, and we won the league rather than need the playoffs. Then The World Billions lottery was created, and Steve Bruce won that, then pumped a billion quid in to signings in January. We won every game 10-0 with the likes of Mbappe reaching 100 goals for the season. Then this summer we bought United, City and Liverpool to be our reserve teams. Would anyone have the nerve to say he wasn't the greatest thing ever to happen to the club? Of course they wouldn't. But that's an imaginary World that hasn't happened. When you literally need to make up a story to fit your argument, you're just proving the opposition point. Haha could not have missed the point more. But great attempt at stretching a point to defend him. Us going up was not down to bruce. Smith has saved us from an absolute mess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 (edited) 4 hours ago, DCJonah said: Utter bullshit. What were these solid foundations? A goalkeeper and cb pair that needed replacing as soon as possible? Loan players that we'd have no chance of keeping had Smith not performed a miracle? Aging players with contracts running out? Yeah really solid foundations there. Imagine we hadn't got promoted. Would anyone have the nerve to suggest bruce built solid foundations when we sold grealish and mcginn and had no chance of signing any of our loan signings? Of course they wouldn't. Promotion has allowed this idea that Bruce did a good job for us. Which is laughable really. The good things he did were easily cancelled out by the bad. We were a car crash when he took over and shipping goals for fun....Dean has performed a miracle, no doubt...I agree. But lets be clear here, Dean has much better owners to work with and a CEO that seems to know what he is doing.....Its like a relay race for me...SB ran his race with what he was handed and closed the gap for Dean to win the race, with a fantastic finish. I think Dean is a Better manager overall, but that does no detract me from appreciating some of the work SB did during his tenure. PS some of the things you mention there, are part of the evolution......are you telling me, Whelan, Jedinak, Terry, Chester, Elmo etc was not instrumental in changing the attitudes behind the scenes and just seen as over aged liabilities.....I disagree mate. When we went down with 3 wins in a season the club was shot......There had to be a massive rebuild of character, discipline and belief, that has to evolve it can't be done in 5 minutes....and sometimes more than one manager has to do it, with a prolonged determination to improve. Dean is just embarking on another challenge and I sincerely hope he manages to keep us up, If we change manager and I sincerely hope we don't have to, I will appreciate the work he has done too, even more so. Edited June 28, 2019 by TRO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 5 hours ago, Mic09 said: I think your analogy is wrong. You hire a contractor to help you build your destroyed antique mansion. You bought a lot of expensive parts, even bought them off your neighbours for large sums. You hired one guy, but quickly found out he didn't know what he was doing and so you decided hire the guy with the pedigree. He has a track record of doing this, I mean he built 4 homes back up which is unrivaled. Yes his methods seem to be outdated, but he gets results and that's all you need right now. By the end, he has built solid foundations. He brought in a number of new features which you use up to today and these are the Crown Jewels in your beautiful new home. He did all the brickwork, he did all the hard work in laying foundations. However, it's clear that he can't finish the house off. What you need is someone with more energy and someone who cares a bit more about finishing your mansion as a long term project rather than just a quick pay off. The contractor isn't happy about it, but at the end of the day, screw them. It's your home. Now, a year later, the house is built. The new guy made some tweaks in plans, however we will never know how good he would have been at laying bricks. He only has a few short term jobs to finish the house off and he did a VERY good job of it. But who knows how he would have dealt without the use of the new features such as your ElEvations or McBricks. (Credit for the puns please) Sometimes you think to yourself, that guy took a lot of money and he couldn't have finished the house off. A lot of time and a lot of effort wasted. Later on you found out, that if he had finished the house on time, a year ago as he planned, the result might have been the investors pulling out due to high cost and project requirements. It's a good job the original guy turned out to only do half the job, because the new guy gets on great with the investors and finished off the house which was built in 75% by the other guy. Both contractors played their part, and both were needed. The new guy did the things the old contractor messed up, sure, but majority of the brickwork was already there. good response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 (edited) 13 minutes ago, DCJonah said: Haha could not have missed the point more. But great attempt at stretching a point to defend him. Us going up was not down to bruce. Smith has saved us from an absolute mess. Write to him and ask him if he sees it that way......explain that you have not got one good word to say about SB and you think he left an absolute mess......ask him if he agrees. Then come on here and give an honest answer. I will accept his opinion. Edited June 28, 2019 by TRO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 3 hours ago, lapal_fan said: Smith has done a great job (obviously), but I think us going up is such an incredible quantity of things going in our favor, that his control of that quantity is so small that I just can't give all the credit to him... If you read that sentence, it sounds incredibly harsh, which I promise is not the case (we're lucky have him!). But winning at Rotherham when a man down, jack scoring the amazing goal, us winning 10 games on the bounce, the whole Leeds saga, beating blues away with a shit goal and Grealish getting punched, McGinn and Jack working well together, Hourihane scoring when we really needed it, Jack coming back from injury on the cusp of play offs disappearing, beating Wednesday in the last 90 seconds after 80 minutes of garbage, somehow drawing 3-3 with Sheff Utd when we played 75 minutes of garbage, scraping past Millwall, Bristol going to shit when we battered them.. it's just too much stuff to say "that's because of Smith". I actually think that winning run is more down the players experiencing last seasons shit show in the play off finals. Jack knew he'd be gone this season, Hourihane has always wanted to go up, but looked like he did in the final 3rd of the season, Whelan played better than he did in the 18 months previous for all but the West Brom game, Tammy didn't score as often as the first half of the season but was still valuable. To me, it just felt inevitable about 4 games into the winning streak after Stoke 1-1 when we were **** shit, then amazing.. Bruce had to go, last season, he was beyond shit, but in the season we lost the play off final, we were essentially Derby this year and Fulham were us. They had all the momentum, there was a feel good and again, unimaginable amounts of things went their way. I was absolutely certain before the Fulham game we'd already lost. I don't gamble, but I'd have been a few quid better off if I did. That's exactly how I saw it.....really spooky, but so true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 28, 2019 Share Posted June 28, 2019 8 minutes ago, TRO said: Write to him and ask him if he sees it that way......explain that you have not got one good word to say about SB and you think he left an absolute mess......ask him if he agrees. Then come on here and give an honest answer. I will accept his opinion. Dean Smith is a classy man, he isnt going to have a pop at Bruce or any manager in the media Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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