fightoffyour Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 16 hours ago, kurtsimonw said: This for me. We had a really brilliant squad and autos should've been the aim. I think Deano is a really crap manager, but at least he took us up (again, should've been autos). You can't be saying that Deano should've taken up automatically? If you just mean that we should've been able to gain automatic promotion at the start of each season we spent in the Championship, then yes absolutely. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 23 minutes ago, KevinRichardsonsMoustache said: I can think two thoughts at the same time: he's a decent human he should have no place in modern football You can think those thoughts at the same time, but one of them seems like it might be a false statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Jonesy7211 Posted January 11 Popular Post Share Posted January 11 He's statistically the worst Premier League (Sky Sports TM) manager of all time, for any manager with over 200 games in the league. Other than Hull no club remembers him fondly. He's berated and ran down the fans at every team he's been at. He's neither a good manager or a good human being. The only people that like him are his mates in the media. He never takes the blame when things go wrong, but he was quite happy to receive praise when we won. He loved digging at anyone who questioned his ability when he got a win. If it wasn't for his media mates I don't think his managerial career would have been half as long. And regarding his time with us, he'd assembled a squad with the highest spend ever for a Championship club and still failed. If we'd spent to our means whilst he was manager I dread to think where we'd have ended up. Any well organised team would play us off the park. We also had this young talent named Jack Grealish who he struggled to get anything out of.... 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwi1890 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 14 hours ago, Zatman said: isnt he a slum landlord Yeah It’s a story that surfaced a few years ago isn’t it. It’s likely he invested in property years ago when football wasn’t a multi billion sport and probably advises by financial experts to do so like many it’s also likely and probable that the business is handled by someone else , I don’t think Steve Bruce goes knocking door to door asking for rent . But this is in no way or form a defence of Steve the living conditions of some if his tenants were un-excusable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 (edited) 36 minutes ago, gwi1890 said: Yeah It’s a story that surfaced a few years ago isn’t it. It’s likely he invested in property years ago when football wasn’t a multi billion sport and probably advises by financial experts to do so like many it’s also likely and probable that the business is handled by someone else , I don’t think Steve Bruce goes knocking door to door asking for rent . But this is in no way or form a defence of Steve the living conditions of some if his tenants were un-excusable. I heard that all of his properties are located next door to a branch of Mr Fish for when he does go knocking. Edited January 11 by fightoffyour 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaJ100 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 2 hours ago, fightoffyour said: You can't be saying that Deano should've taken up automatically? If you just mean that we should've been able to gain automatic promotion at the start of each season we spent in the Championship, then yes absolutely. Yeah I mean didn't we win 10 in a row? Had to pull out league destroying form to even finish 5th 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duke313 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 19 hours ago, kurtsimonw said: This for me. We had a really brilliant squad and autos should've been the aim. I think Deano is a really crap manager, but at least he took us up (again, should've been autos). He likely would have if he had been in charge from beginning of the season. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurtsimonw Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 (edited) 4 hours ago, fightoffyour said: You can't be saying that Deano should've taken up automatically? If you just mean that we should've been able to gain automatic promotion at the start of each season we spent in the Championship, then yes absolutely. Yeah, I meant we should've basically gone up autos every season. Deano obviously didn't have the same opportunity given he didn't manage a full season. It was more a point to hammer home that despite not rating Deano as a manager, steve Bruce had a full season and still couldn't do what he did. Edited January 11 by kurtsimonw 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 22 hours ago, The Fun Factory said: There is a fair bit of revisionism going in here. Bruce at least steadied the ship on the pitch. 2011-2016 was utterly awful, apart from a few minor blips. And RDM was a failed experiment. Bruce was fine for the situation we were in. You expected Villa to lose virtually every time we played. At least under Bruce we won a fair amount of games. Ok it was the championship, we spent to much, and at best the football was functional but still at least you went to Villa Park expecting to see a win. And I don't get all of this personal dislike to the bloke, seemed ok to me. He wasn't in charge of the overspend, that was done to Wyness and Dr Tony. I half agree. I'm no big Bruce fan but that season we got to the playoff final was a very fun season. Had a season ticket and loved going to every game That being said, we should have been even better, so he was still underachieving. But yeah I don't buy into this thought that we were some turgid, unwatchable team. We weren't great, but we won loads of games and scored loads of goals But thank god he wasn't better! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Albrighton Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 (edited) My memory or rather immediate response to the 2017/18 is “blimey that was a slog”. The same could be said about the season prior. I guess I think of it as being broken up into the first RDM quarter, then Bruce, then peppered with “Ooh are we buying Conor Hourihane” excitement. Plus we had Kodjia being entertaining. Whereas we won 24 games in 2017/18 and still I somehow think of it as an interminable slog. Maybe that is just life in the Championship unless you’re romping it. If I’m being fair it might be because Wolves were so much better which was irritating, I think we were in second place for something like 5 or 6 days. Never felt like we had a firm grasp of things. Admittedly we won 7 games in a row which is no easy thing. But even then at the time, I remember thinking what’s going to happen when we play the other form team, Fulham (in the league game at craven cottage I mean, I met Keith Wyness after that game as it goes. He said we’d be ok, the deceptive sod). Don’t know, even if I try and remove the play off final defeat and the subsequent fall out of that, finding lots of positive memories of that season is a bit of a struggle for me. Edited January 11 by Mark Albrighton 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post fightoffyour Posted January 11 VT Supporter Popular Post Share Posted January 11 42 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said: My memory or rather immediate response to the 2017/18 is “blimey that was a slog”. The same could be said about the season prior. I guess I think of it as being broken up into the first RDM quarter, then Bruce, then peppered with “Ooh are we buying Conor Hourihane” excitement. Plus we had Kodjia being entertaining. Whereas we won 24 games in 2017/18 and still I somehow think of it as an interminable slog. Maybe that is just life in the Championship unless you’re romping it. If I’m being fair it might be because Wolves were so much better which was irritating, I think we were in second place for something like 5 or 6 days. Never felt like we had a firm grasp of things. Admittedly we won 7 games in a row which is no easy thing. But even then at the time, I remember thinking what’s going to happen when we play the other form team, Fulham (in the league game at craven cottage I mean, I met Keith Wyness after that game as it goes. He said we’d be ok, the deceptive sod). Don’t know, even if I try and remove the play off final defeat and the subsequent fall out of that, finding lots of positive memories of that season is a bit of a struggle for me. My overriding memory is having absolutely no belief that we would win that play-off final. Sure, we could have won it on the day - it's a single football match after all - but there there was no belief that we would. Compare that to Deano's final, and the feeling was completely reversed. We would have won that game at least 9 times out of 10, as he even told the players (if I remember from his talk at a college/uni?). Sure, we could have lost on the day, but there was total belief that we would win it. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Albrighton Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 13 minutes ago, fightoffyour said: My overriding memory is having absolutely no belief that we would win that play-off final. Sure, we could have won it on the day - it's a single football match after all - but there there was no belief that we would. Compare that to Deano's final, and the feeling was completely reversed. We would have won that game at least 9 times out of 10, as he even told the players (if I remember from his talk at a college/uni?). Sure, we could have lost on the day, but there was total belief that we would win it. Yeah I distinctly remember trying to convince myself that we would turn up and batter them (Fulham) on the day 3-0. I might have even said so on here. Absolutely no reason for that other than just wanting to believe the good guys would prevail. And in fairness, I think most people outside of Villa would say that the good guys did win it on the day. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Follyfoot Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said: My memory or rather immediate response to the 2017/18 is “blimey that was a slog”. The same could be said about the season prior. I guess I think of it as being broken up into the first RDM quarter, then Bruce, then peppered with “Ooh are we buying Conor Hourihane” excitement. Plus we had Kodjia being entertaining. Whereas we won 24 games in 2017/18 and still I somehow think of it as an interminable slog. Maybe that is just life in the Championship unless you’re romping it. If I’m being fair it might be because Wolves were so much better which was irritating, I think we were in second place for something like 5 or 6 days. Never felt like we had a firm grasp of things. Admittedly we won 7 games in a row which is no easy thing. But even then at the time, I remember thinking what’s going to happen when we play the other form team, Fulham (in the league game at craven cottage I mean, I met Keith Wyness after that game as it goes. He said we’d be ok, the deceptive sod). Don’t know, even if I try and remove the play off final defeat and the subsequent fall out of that, finding lots of positive memories of that season is a bit of a struggle for me. My overriding memory is those noncey clapper things the Fulham fans had at Wembley 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Villatillidie95 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 Bruce did give us some good moments tbf to him, that 17/18 team had some very likeable and memorable characters in, uncle albert and snodgrass, elmo, hutton, jedi stand out. Barnsley away their fans were constantly recording our away end as dont think they had ever seen that many, there was the last minute snodgrass curler at bramall lane with absolute scenes in the 93rd min or something, the 4-2 v sheffield wednesday....it was a heartbreaking end to the campaign at wembley but long term it was for the best as we know, and we were back there within a year with a better manager and able to achieve the right result 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said: My memory or rather immediate response to the 2017/18 is “blimey that was a slog”. The same could be said about the season prior. I guess I think of it as being broken up into the first RDM quarter, then Bruce, then peppered with “Ooh are we buying Conor Hourihane” excitement. Plus we had Kodjia being entertaining. Whereas we won 24 games in 2017/18 and still I somehow think of it as an interminable slog. Maybe that is just life in the Championship unless you’re romping it. If I’m being fair it might be because Wolves were so much better which was irritating, I think we were in second place for something like 5 or 6 days. Never felt like we had a firm grasp of things. Admittedly we won 7 games in a row which is no easy thing. But even then at the time, I remember thinking what’s going to happen when we play the other form team, Fulham (in the league game at craven cottage I mean, I met Keith Wyness after that game as it goes. He said we’d be ok, the deceptive sod). Don’t know, even if I try and remove the play off final defeat and the subsequent fall out of that, finding lots of positive memories of that season is a bit of a struggle for me. Wolves wasnt really the issue but Cardiff we barely touched in the promotion race and they spent very little 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 2 hours ago, Stevo985 said: I half agree. I'm no big Bruce fan but that season we got to the playoff final was a very fun season. Had a season ticket and loved going to every game That being said, we should have been even better, so he was still underachieving. But yeah I don't buy into this thought that we were some turgid, unwatchable team. We weren't great, but we won loads of games and scored loads of goals But thank god he wasn't better! We got pipped to second place and automatic promotion by Cardiff City led by Junior **** Hoilett, which was embarrassing and even to 3rd by a late surge from Fulham. It was a fun season given it had been eons since we had won so many games in a single season, but 4th place and failure to win the playoffs was ultimately pretty poor going. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Albrighton Posted January 11 VT Supporter Share Posted January 11 1 hour ago, Zatman said: Wolves wasnt really the issue but Cardiff we barely touched in the promotion race and they spent very little Yeah but I had to hear from more Wolves fans than I did Cardiff that season so that made it more of a difficult year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 Wolves were probably the best team the Championship has ever seen. They had Ruben Neves who was the captain of Porto FFS, as well as other players like Jota who were way too good for that league. No shame in not finishing above them. But we absolutely should have come second though. For the amount we spent on transfers and wages, finishing below Cardiff was unacceptable. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaJ100 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 (edited) That season was exhausting. Felt like we gave everything to get to second by a point then had terrible results like losing to relegated Bolton etc while Cardiff and their agricultural football kept racking up the wins. Also Fulham going on like a 18 wins in 20 winning streak or something ridiculous inspired by bloody Ryan Sessegnon, only to have a chance to get automatic themselves but lost to fking small heath which also kept them up. Unbelievable Edited January 11 by VillaJ100 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MapleVilla Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 6 hours ago, fightoffyour said: I heard that all of his properties are located next door to a branch of Mr Fish for when he does go knocking. I heard it was Kebab cottage 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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