Steve Bruce

[MaVilla]

he's playing 5-4-1 versus Leeds........derp.

its pretty obvious to anyone that a 4231 suits the players at his disposal, he really doesnt know anything does he....

[HanoiVillan]

6 hours ago, useless said:

That season we'd brought in the likes of Kodjia, Chester, Jedinak, Elphick, Hourihane, Sam Johnstone and Adomah, amongst others, it definitely wasn't a squad that should be anywhere near a relegation battle in the championship, and would have taken a very bad manager indeed for us to be anywhere near going down with those players available, this idea that Bruce saved us from relegation just isn't true, I know some like to compare us to Sunderland, but our situations weren't really the same.

Truth be told that season we finished thirteenth, eighteen points from the play offs and thirty points from the top two, so not even sure you can call that stopping the rot, wasn't until the following season that things began to improve by which time as well as signing all the above we had added the likes of Terry, Tuanzebe, Snodgrass, Grabban and others to the squad.

Whether we think he was 'very bad indeed' or not, the manager we actually had at the time had us in a relegation battle. Being in 19th, having won one match all season with 25% of the season gone, that is a relegation battle. Of course none of us can know whether we would have gone down if RDM had stayed or not, that's the nature of 'alternate histories', but we were a bad outfit at that point.

I also think the 'finished 13th' thing is slightly overblown, because in common with a lot of teams we just cruised in to the end of the season once it was clear we weren't going to make the playoffs. The story of that season was that it was split into 5 sections; the first was RDM's period, the second was a run of 12 matches with only 2 defeats, then a run of 10 games without a win, then a run of 8 games with 7 wins and 1 loss which saw us as very outside candidates for a playoff place, and then the final section was a couple of bad results that ended that possibility and an irrelevant end to the season. I suspect that that 4th section of the season was why Bruce was not in any danger of losing his job that summer; it felt like we could recapture that the following season (which we sort of did, eventually, after our traditional poor start).

[Keyblade]

1 hour ago, NeilS said:

One thing that used to make me laugh about Steve Bruce when he was manager of Wigan/sha was his after match comments on MotD. After a defeat, He would pretty much without fail always say "I am not one to make excuses, but...." and then proceed to make excuses for the defeat. He did it every week they lost which was fairly regularly. It was a little thing but it did make me laugh that he was so adamant that he didn't make excuses. I heard him start to trot that line out the other night as well but was laughing too hard to hear what his excuse was this time.

In his bigger jobs such as Sunderland/Villa/Newcastle, after a defeat he usually says the line "we can talk about tactics all day but we didn't [insert article of clothing that needed adjusting]", in other words "yeah let's not talk about tactics". The man should get into politics when he's done with football  

[Xela]

The best thing he did was bring in John Terry. 

[NeilS]

1 minute ago, Keyblade said:

In his bigger jobs such as Sunderland/Villa/Newcastle, after a defeat he usually says the line "we can talk about tactics all day but we didn't [insert article of clothing that needed adjusting]", in other words "yeah let's not talk about tactics". The man should get into politics when he's done with football  

 you are probably right. He is a master deflector of blame.

[Keyblade]

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Whether we think he was 'very bad indeed' or not, the manager we actually had at the time had us in a relegation battle. Being in 19th, having won one match all season with 25% of the season gone, that is a relegation battle. Of course none of us can know whether we would have gone down if RDM had stayed or not, that's the nature of 'alternate histories', but we were a bad outfit at that point.

I also think the 'finished 13th' thing is slightly overblown, because in common with a lot of teams we just cruised in to the end of the season once it was clear we weren't going to make the playoffs. The story of that season was that it was split into 5 sections; the first was RDM's period, the second was a run of 12 matches with only 2 defeats, then a run of 10 games without a win, then a run of 8 games with 7 wins and 1 loss which saw us as very outside candidates for a playoff place, and then the final section was a couple of bad results that ended that possibility and an irrelevant end to the season. I suspect that that 4th section of the season was why Bruce was not in any danger of losing his job that summer; it felt like we could recapture that the following season (which we sort of did, eventually, after our traditional poor start).

I was surprised he didn't get sacked after section 3. Because it wasn't just 10 games without a win. I think it was 8 losses in those 10 or something like that. But yeah, I was happy to give him the chance to pull it all together in his second season. Halfway through it though it became apparent that we'd always be a streaky team, precisely because form fluctuates, and players' form is very important for a team that don't really have a well-defined way of playing.

[blandy]

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Whether we think he was 'very bad indeed' or not, the manager we actually had at the time had us in a relegation battle. Being in 19th, having won one match all season with 25% of the season gone, that is a relegation battle. Of course none of us can know whether we would have gone down if RDM had stayed or not, that's the nature of 'alternate histories', but we were a bad outfit at that point.

I also think the 'finished 13th' thing is slightly overblown, because in common with a lot of teams we just cruised in to the end of the season once it was clear we weren't going to make the playoffs. The story of that season was that it was split into 5 sections; the first was RDM's period, the second was a run of 12 matches with only 2 defeats, then a run of 10 games without a win, then a run of 8 games with 7 wins and 1 loss which saw us as very outside candidates for a playoff place, and then the final section was a couple of bad results that ended that possibility and an irrelevant end to the season. I suspect that that 4th section of the season was why Bruce was not in any danger of losing his job that summer; it felt like we could recapture that the following season (which we sort of did, eventually, after our traditional poor start).

Perfect.

The notion that he didn't stop the rot is wilfully blind to the culture change and organisation and human level relationship with players that he brought to the club, plus his experience - a number of the immediate predecessors were novices to a degree or more, to management and that run of inexperienced managers had left the club with some dodgy foundations and no confidence.

Equally daft is any kind of claim to, I dunno, "Messiah" status by Bruce for "stopping us doing a Sunderland" and plummeting through the floor with another straight relegation.  As you say we were 19th and had just played awfully at Preston, and were drawing too many games. But that squad was never actually going down. It just needed organising and then the rot would be stopped.

[bannedfromHandV]

59 minutes ago, BG_Villa_Fan said:

Although I disagree I can accept the point that he 'stopped the rot', however this ^ is a step or three too far. He hasn't set any foundations, not here, not anywhere he's been. He was well on his way to have another wasted season when he was sacked.

Everything we have now was built from the ground up by Dean Smith. 

Right okay, I fancy there’s zero point in debating it any further with you.

Aston Villa didn’t exist before Dean Smith.

[BG_Villa_Fan]

9 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Right okay, I fancy there’s zero point in debating it any further with you.

Aston Villa didn’t exist before Dean Smith.

There was Aston Villa before Smith of course. It existed somewhere between SHA and Bolton. 

[Zatman]

How fellow managers react when they go LMA meetings

[rodders0223]

To be fair wor gave it a real good go tonight. Just didn't get the rub of the green.

 

 

[TrentVilla]

His 200th PL defeat and people think the issue is the game has moved on? He has never ever been a good PL manager.

Who could they get better? 

[rodders0223]

1 minute ago, TrentVilla said:

His 200th PL defeat and people think the issue is the game has moved on? He has never ever been a good PL manager.

Who could they get better? 

Nobody, he's a specialist is PL survival. Been there, done it, got the T shirt. Tried and trusted. A proper man. A proper warrior. Not a quieter. Nobody is more up for the fight for it than Brucey.

[Keyblade]

4 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

His 200th PL defeat and people think the issue is the game has moved on? He has never ever been a good PL manager.

Who could they get better? 

I imagine half of that was with SHA and Wigan to be fair.

[villalad21]

Looked like the gloves in fact were off today

[Zatman]

17 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I imagine half of that was with SHA and Wigan to be fair.

No defeats at Villa in the top flight, people only dont like him because he managed that lot down the road  

[sidcow]

Has he told anyone to "listen" yet? 

[a-k]

[Zatman]

5 minutes ago, a-k said:

Looks like he was asked if he wants a Diet Coke

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, Zatman said:

Looks like he was asked if he wants a Diet Coke

Or diced cabbage in his kebab.