Steve Bruce

[Tommo_b]

Quote

We are what we are. We've spent millions and managed to get a decent result or two against crap teams. However, when we come up against anyone decent we can't score and invariably lose.

 

BTW, Brentford are winning 3-0 away at Forest. No need to say any more.

Ah yes the same Forest side who just beat Brighton 3-0 in their previous match. 

[Eastie]

Plenty positives - we were arguably the better team for long periods and created good chances and restricted them to hardly a chance.

however we failed to take our chances and again our opponent put away the chance they made - the nucleus is developing of a decent team - those predicting we would be played off the park are wrong but no doubt as we lost it will be another stick to beat Bruce with.

 

[Eastie]

37 minutes ago, JE- said:

Do you know what make no sense mate 

Accepting losses to sides who can beat us having spent penny's when we as a club are meant to actually want promotion. 

It's clear from the owner to the fans that there is zero awareness about what is required to achieve promotion and actually automatic promotion. 

We aren't talking about staying in this league... Maybe 5 years of fighting relegation battles makes it a habit to accept a loss or a point away from home and not think much of it. 

Busy most the day so have fun 

It's clear there is zero awareness from the owner about what's required to achieve promotion ? 

Bizarre statement considering he's employed a manager who's achieved 4 promotions 

[pacbuddies]

3 minutes ago, Eastie said:

Plenty positives - we were arguably the better team for long periods and created good chances and restricted them to hardly a chance.

however we failed to take our chances and again our opponent put away the chance they made - the nucleus is developing of a decent team - those predicting we would be played off the park are wrong but no doubt as we lost it will be another stick to beat Bruce with.

 

If I pop into every thread will I see this same post everywhere?

[kurtsimonw]

1 hour ago, JE- said:

Do you know what make no sense mate 

Accepting losses to sides who can beat us having spent penny's when we as a club are meant to actually want promotion. 

It's clear from the owner to the fans that there is zero awareness about what is required to achieve promotion and actually automatic promotion. 

You're right. Nobody at this club knows what's required to achieve promotion from this league.

Not even the bloke managing us who's done it more than anybody ever.

Nice try. Back to boing-boing.com you go.

[weedman]

1 hour ago, JE- said:

Accepting losses to sides who can beat us having spent penny's when we as a club are meant to actually want promotion.

Comments like this really irk me - the reason those sides cost so little is because the players weren't good enough when they signed, given time and a run in a settled side they begin to stand out so until our players, regardless of cost, get that same opportunity it's impossible to compare. 

 

I was interested a while back to see what Leicester fans thought of Vardy when they signed him and none of them thought he was good enough, the highest praise I found in his 1st season with them was "Decent enough as a squad player in the Championship but need better if we have any chance of promotion". Give him a run and some time and suddenly everyone's crying that we spend all this money on players when there are players like Vardy available for peanuts. 

 

Its not all about money spent, time is a big thing, look in the Bjarnasson thread, people had written him off after 45 minutes, people are judging Bruce's whole managerial record on the last 12 games as if the previous (plucking number out of thin air here) 300 games are pure luck, and it's these 12 that prove my point 

 

Have a little patience and we may just reap the rewards, or we can just sack another manager and start again, that's worked well over the last 6 years

[kurtsimonw]

8 minutes ago, weedman said:

or we can just sack another manager and start again, that's worked well over the last 6 years

You know what won't change by sacking the manager? The cost of the squad. So no matter who we bring in to manage the team, if we're not top of the league you'll have the same moaners saying "We've spent X more than Y, we should be Z points above them". 

[Stevo985]

From an admittedly limited sample, it seems the people who actually went last night are reporting we played well first half and should have been ahead, so we were unlucky to lose.

The people slating the performance seem to be basing it on a handful of statistics.

 

Stats can be very useful when used in context. But I absolutely hate this culture of basing entire opinions on games/teams/players based purely on stats.

[Eastie]

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

From an admittedly limited sample, it seems the people who actually went last night are reporting we played well first half and should have been ahead, so we were unlucky to lose.

The people slating the performance seem to be basing it on a handful of statistics.

 

Stats can be very useful when used in context. But I absolutely hate this culture of basing entire opinions on games/teams/players based purely on stats.

In many cases the same people moaning about performance when we were winning and not playing well are now moaning we played well and lost .

[bobzy]

31 minutes ago, Eastie said:

In many cases the same people moaning about performance when we were winning and not playing well are now moaning we played well and lost .

I didn't watch the game (well, tried to on a poor stream but...), did we actually play well? Sounds to me like it was a pretty dull game. 

[Eastie]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

I didn't watch the game (well, tried to on a poor stream but...), did we actually play well? Sounds to me like it was a pretty dull game. 

Deserved a draw at least - missed our chances and they had one real effort and scored - considering they are 3rd in table I think it's fair to say we were probably the better team on the night.

[Jareth]

I'm not Bruce's biggest fan, I don't know what will happen, but what I really want is signs of steady improvement and I believe that despite the loss, yesterday was an improvement. Next game is key, to ensure we continue this. And although Bruce fielded a team we would all like to see more of, we had no real options from the bench. Good enough for me. 

[romavillan]

40 minutes ago, bobzy said:

I didn't watch the game (well, tried to on a poor stream but...), did we actually play well? Sounds to me like it was a pretty dull game. 

depends what you mean, played well in a brazil 70 kind of way? no. play well in completely killing their game and not letting them play, yep, from what I heard on the radio we completely smothered them and made the best chances. the game can be dull and still be good football in a certain catenaccio sense. I think it's going to be Bruce's best style and it seems in character with a center half who played in a winning side, his strengths are naturally on that side of the game. Like I've just said in the match thread, if he gets us doing it well and we win a shit-ton of games 1-0 with suffocating anti-football that's hard to watch, then **** it, I'll take that if we get promoted doing it. Against my footballing principles but needs must at the moment and I can't see Bruce turning us into a 70% possession passing and movement between the lines type team. 

 

He needs to prove between now and the end of may that that's a real possibility though, that we can do it effectively and average 2 points a game doing it.

[sonic_bouma]

I went to the game.

We didn't deserve to lose. In the first half we nullified Huddersfield very well and managed to create 3 good chances which all could have ended up in the back of the net. Story of many games this season.

The football wasn't scintillating (people need to make peace that it never will be with Bruce) in the first half but it was proving to be a perfect away performance. What was very impressive was our pressing high up the pitch led by hourihane. I'd like to see more of that.

The second half was poorer from us. Too many hopeful long balls not much cohesion.however we were not under real pressure at any point. They shot they scored once again story of our season in many ways.

This game shouldn't be used as a stick to beat Bruce with. People usin stats who didn't go to the game need to put their keyboard down. They bare no relevance whatsoever to last nights game.

Dislike Bruce or not the fact is We were unlucky. Get over it.

[Stevo985]

3 minutes ago, sonic_bouma said:

 What was very impressive was our pressing high up the pitch led by hourihane. I'd like to see more of that.

It's funny, because this was very much part of the immediate improvement we showed under Bruce when he first came in. It was noticeably improved over RDM's performances. Then that seemed to drop off with our downturn in form in January.

I hope it's the case that that was down to fatigue over the xmas period and the new arrivals bedding in and it's something he's trying to re-introduce. 

I think it makes a massive difference.

[sne]

8 minutes ago, sonic_bouma said:

I went to the game.

We didn't deserve to lose. In the first half we nullified Huddersfield very well and managed to create 3 good chances which all could have ended up in the back of the net. Story of many games this season.

The football wasn't scintillating (people need to make peace that it never will be with Bruce) in the first half but it was proving to be a perfect away performance. What was very impressive was our pressing high up the pitch led by hourihane. I'd like to see more of that.

The second half was poorer from us. Too many hopeful long balls not much cohesion.however we were not under real pressure at any point. They shot they scored once again story of our season in many ways.

This game shouldn't be used as a stick to beat Bruce with. People usin stats who didn't go to the game need to put their keyboard down. They bare no relevance whatsoever to last nights game.

Dislike Bruce or not the fact is We were unlucky. Get over it.

Having not watched the game, I'd say that's about how I would read the stats when looking at them.

It was a good defensive away performance. We could have scored in the first, fell back in the second. We are still not comfortable in attacking possession, but we should have gotten a draw.

Fits in with what I've seen in the last few games, the one really positive for me is that the pressing game is getting better and we are able to keep it up for longer periods of the game.

One just have too weed away the extremes saying it was crap or the ones saying we were t'riffic and should have won by 3. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

This lack of 'luck' seems to have followed us around all season, in fact it's farcical the number of games where we have created lots of chances, only to not take them and end up losing (or drawing). It's really not good enough given the amount of money we have spent on attacking players. There's a lack of ruthlessness about this side and frankly not enough concentration defensively down the stretch, it needs to be resolved. I can't say this is all on Bruce, it's mainly an issue with the players. 

The bottom line is that our recruitment this season has largely been poor (especially in the summer), we need to learn some substantial lessons from it. Throwing money at players isn't going to solve the problem at this level, because all it leads to is pure wastage. We should not be spending 8 figure sums on player again whilst we are in this division. Virtually all the teams above us have spent a fraction of our budget, we need to use our brains more in the market. The good thing is that Bruce seems to be doing this to some extent, as exemplified by the Lansbury and Hourihane signings. They had smaller transfer fees and were shrewd picks (leveraging their contract situations). We need to continue doing this and make better use of the loan market. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Dr_Pangloss

[PaulC]

Arguably the three best signings this season were made in the summer but oh well another season in the championship looming. Its hard to be interested with nothing left to play for this season, We're not going up and we wont go down. Whether its bad luck or not, but to be in this situation this season after splashing put the way we have is not good enough.

[markavfc40]

2 hours ago, Eastie said:

In many cases the same people moaning about performance when we were winning and not playing well are now moaning we played well and lost .

There are a number of fans that have gone all in on wanting Bruce out so they will use any stick to beat him with. I don’t particularly have a problem with wanting him out but a little consistency in the reasons for that would be nice.

Personally I think after a dire run we have turned things around really well. Nine points from twelve and if you take our performance in the first game of that run against Derby to our performance last night then performances have improved dramatically as well over that time. The aim for the remainder of this season has to be to combine good performances with positive results.

I also have a fair amount of sympathy for Bruce as we are having some terrible luck with injuries. We can still put a good starting 11 on the pitch but you look at our bench last night and there was not one player on there who you would say we could bring on to make a positive impact and help us get a goal. You also have to wonder how long the likes of Jedinak can keep playing Saturday Tuesday for without needing a rest.

Having said that we now play Sheff Wed then a week later Wigan and then have a couple of weeks break. By the time we play Norwich on the 1st April hopefully 3 or 4 of the absentees will be back.

I still anticipate a positive end to this season and that combined with a full preseason will be the springboard for us to hit the ground running next season.

Edited March 8, 2017 by markavfc40

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

41 minutes ago, PaulC said:

Arguably the three best signings this season were made in the summer but oh well another season in the championship looming. Its hard to be interested with nothing left to play for this season, We're not going up and we wont go down. Whether its bad luck or not, but to be in this situation this season after splashing put the way we have is not good enough.

I know exactly what you mean, which is another reason yesterday is so disappointing.

As stupid as it may seem I have secretly held hope we could still do the unthinkable!

Quietly looking at all the fixtures of teams around us and trying to work out what results would need to go our way to scrape it.

I genuinely think without a couple of the injuries, say perhaps even with Green, Hogan in yday, we win that game all day yesterday based on how we played!

Edited March 8, 2017 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN