Chop chop! Lets all gawp at Newcastle (again)

[NeilS]

17 minutes ago, TheStagMan said:

Oh Christ. The Steve Bruce debate is STILL raging on.   

And it's not even the Steve Bruce thread!

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

We’ve seen under Klopp and Pep.......two of the worlds best Managers managing the clubs in the top 1% of world football.

 

And you wonder why we, in the Championship under Steve Bruce didn’t look as good? Wow man.

 

And I’d love to know this ‘system’ we have under Smith because as far as I see it we give the ball to Jack and hope he does something magical, oh that and put in loads of crosses aimlessly.

I-I didn't make the initial Klopp and Pep comparison, and was just responding to it?

We can just look at our team under Dean Smith in the same league with the same team?

Our philosophy was pretty clear and will defined. Play through the midfield, get it wide and overload in wide areas to get crosses in early.

It worked. We got promoted on the first try, breaking our club record and playing the best football we've seen at VP since the 90's at least. That it's not working as well in a league above, probably the most intense league in the world, with a brand new set of players doesn't diminish that fact in the slightest.

[LakotaDakota]

1 hour ago, Keyblade said:

I-I didn't make the initial Klopp and Pep comparison, and was just responding to it?

We can just look at our team under Dean Smith in the same league with the same team?

Our philosophy was pretty clear and will defined. Play through the midfield, get it wide and overload in wide areas to get crosses in early.

It worked. We got promoted on the first try, breaking our club record and playing the best football we've seen at VP since the 90's at least. That it's not working as well in a league above, probably the most intense league in the world, with a brand new set of players doesn't diminish that fact in the slightest.

we also won 3 games in 17 under smith conceding shitloads of goals and getting battered by crap teams before the 10 in a row & You say Bruce is a streaky manager....

[Keyblade]

14 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

we also won 3 games in 17 under smith conceding shitloads of goals and getting battered by crap teams before the 10 in a row & You say Bruce is a streaky manager....

Firstly, it was 13 games, and we also only lost 4 of those, so I guess you could spin it like that if you want to ignore all context and make a particular point. It was a mish mash of results, most of them draws. Not exactly a streak is it?

We still scored 18 goals in those 13 games. The problem was we also conceded 23, probably due to the fact that we lost the only natural centerback we had left until we signed Mings and Hause in January. We even went as far as recalling Tommy Elphick who predictably went straight into the side.

[LakotaDakota]

5 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Firstly, it was 13 games,

It was 16 league games & 1 cup game. We won 3 of them & yes it is a streak of winning 3 games out of 17

Edited February 6, 2020 by LakotaDakota

[Keyblade]

2 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

It was 16 league games & 1 cup game. We won 3 of them.

Ah so you're going all the way back to the Forest 5-5 draw to exaggerate your point. Even threw in a cup game, nice  

Most would agree that our relatively poor run started after the draw at the Hawthorns and not when we had an entertaining draw with Forest and played Boro off their own park. I see you've also ignored the rest of my post about how it wasn't a streak, pedantry about the number of games/wins notwithstanding.

[sne]

For me both Bruce and Smith had basically a free hit during their initial periods here because of how the squads was.

Bruce had no midfield when he took over from RDM and Smith had no defense when he took over from Bruce. And I said as much at the time.

This "excuse" does not last thou once they are given the chance to bring in reinforcements.

 

[LakotaDakota]

Well considering Forest was the start of the run it seemed like a pretty reasonable place to start and you actually even get an extra win for the golden boy by you know starting at the start...... & is 3 wins in 17 actually any worse than 2 wins in 13..... they are both shit. You were whining Bruce was streaky because we didn't win for 7 games befor egoing on a good run yesterday. you were also whining about going out of the cup in the first round under Bruce &  now the cup doesn't matter under smith despite getting shat on by swansea....

winning 2/3 games in three months then winning 10 is a row is about as streaky as it is possible to get

Edited February 6, 2020 by LakotaDakota

[Keyblade]

6 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

Well considering Forest was the start of the run it seemed like a pretty reasonable place to start and you actually even get an extra win for the golden boy by you know starting at the start...... & is 3 wins in 17 actually any worse than 2 wins in 13..... they are both shit. You were whining Bruce was streaky because we didn't win for 7 games befor egoing on a good run yesterday

winning 2/3 games in three months then winning 10 is a row is about as streaky as it is possible to get

Golden boy? Yikes. Y'all getting paid by Big Steve or something? Because you can't all be Alex.

Anyway, you can start arbitrarily from anywhere to make any point, but it's generally agreed upon that the start of our poor run before the winning run was West Brom away. And again, you could spin it and say it was just 4 losses in 17 or whatever the arbitrary number is to give the impression that it was a good run. Hell I can go back all the way to Derby away and say it was just 4 losses in 20 to make a point but I would be grossly misrepresenting the statistics.

Also despite you taking offence to it for some reason, I didn't bring up our streaky nature as a particular positive or negative, it was to highlight that it was simply symptomatic of Bruce's style or lack thereof, which is where the bulk of my criticism lies. I also didn't say Bruce didn't win for 7 games but that he lost 7 in a row. That's a losing streak. Winning 7 in a row, that's a winning streak etc etc.

[Zatman]

I genuinely dont understand the blind admiration for a man that purposefully tried to **** our season over and who seriously endangered our captain

[Stevo985]

Just now, Zatman said:

I genuinely dont understand the blind admiration for a man that purposefully tried to **** our season over and who seriously endangered our captain

Is there any blind admiration?

It's mostly people just saying not absolutely everything the bloke has ever done since the day he was born was shit. Which is how some of the posts on here come across  

[Zatman]

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

Is there any blind admiration?

It's mostly people just saying not absolutely everything the bloke has ever done since the day he was born was shit. Which is how some of the posts on here come across  

Dean Smith has been sarcastically called golden boy by more than one poster

[Keyblade]

21 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Is there any blind admiration?

It's mostly people just saying not absolutely everything the bloke has ever done since the day he was born was shit. Which is how some of the posts on here come across  

You can't even criticize the man's style of football without people getting all defensive. Nobody's saying he's Tim Sherwood, he's not the worst manager ever. It's just funny seeing him talking about "I can't open up and play my way yet", when he has no way. I've yet to see anybody point out what his way is. He was with us for 2 years. What was our style of football?

Harry Redknapp as funny as it sounds is a remarkably similar old school manager, one of the key differences being that he wasn't overly concerned about "keeping it tight at the back" and as a result his teams were slightly more entertaining to watch. But in the end, he failed at pretty much all of his clubs, pretty much because he had no plan beyond "give Niko the ball and 'e'll come up with the goods" etc. Conversely there are so called dinosaurs like Pulis and Allardyce for example that, as bad as their football is to watch, have a clear approach to the game and in Allardyce's case is very successful at it. Gun to my head, I'd take that every day. We probably would have got promoted in 2017 if we had Allardyce.

[bannedfromHandV]

13 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

You can't even criticize the man's style of football without people getting all defensive. Nobody's saying he's Tim Sherwood, he's not the worst manager ever. It's just funny seeing him talking about "I can't open up and play my way yet", when he has no way. I've yet to see anybody point out what his way is. He was with us for 2 years. What was our style of football?

Harry Redknapp as funny as it sounds is a remarkably similar old school manager, one of the key differences being that he wasn't overly concerned about "keeping it tight at the back" and as a result his teams were slightly more entertaining to watch. But in the end, he failed at pretty much all of his clubs, pretty much because he had no plan beyond "give Niko the ball and 'e'll come up with the goods" etc. Conversely there are so called dinosaurs like Pulis and Allardyce for example that, as bad as their football is to watch, have a clear approach to the game and in Allardyce's case is very successful at it. Gun to my head, I'd take that every day. We probably would have got promoted in 2017 if we had Allardyce.

On one hand, I can't be arsed carrying this on but then I can't help myself.

 

How many Managers can you name who have a defined style? You have the obvious ones, Pep, Klopp etc but how many others?

 

To hear/read you go on you'd think Bruce is in a small minority when actually, I think he's in a very large majority of Managers who have no defined style of play.

[Keyblade]

13 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

On one hand, I can't be arsed carrying this on but then I can't help myself.

 

How many Managers can you name who have a defined style? You have the obvious ones, Pep, Klopp etc but how many others?

 

To hear/read you go on you'd think Bruce is in a small minority when actually, I think he's in a very large majority of Managers who have no defined style of play.

I disagree, in the modern game I think it's most of the good ones. The ones that don't, who aren't part of the old boys club like Mark Hughes and co have slowly been phased out. In the PL. I'd say the majority of PL teams, even most of the teams at the bottom like Brighton, Burnley, Norwich and even us have a character style. I wouldn't say Potter, Farke, Dyche and Smith are particularly elite managers. That's not to mention Wilders, Nuno she Rodgers who have their take punching above their weight due to their coaching styles.

I think the emphasis on man management, which Bruce was admittedly very good at has become outdated now. For example, in the 2000's Moyes was an excellent motivator and man manager who saw plenty of success with Everton, and now he's a dinosaur, just another in the PL old boy merry-go-round. I think Bruce is in the same boat. He's by no means one of the worst though, as evidenced by the good job he's doing at Newcastle.

[Zatman]

Most successful managers develop a style not just elite managers and doesnt even have to be successful. Moyes at Everton, Howe, Martinez even Pulis/Big Sam. 

Bruce was just eh JT, Chezzy keep it tight at back, Snoddy, Jack, Conor do a goal or something 

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

Dean Smith has been sarcastically called golden boy by more than one poster

How is that blind admiration for Bruce?

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Keyblade said:

You can't even criticize the man's style of football without people getting all defensive. 

 

I don't think anyone has said his style of football is amazing, the only argument is that it's effective and that Smith's at times, hasn't been much better. Which it hasn't

1 hour ago, Keyblade said:

Nobody's saying he's Tim Sherwood, he's not the worst manager ever. It's just funny seeing him talking about "I can't open up and play my way yet", when he has no way. I've yet to see anybody point out what his way is. He was with us for 2 years. What was our style of football?

There have been plenty of times in the Steve Bruce thread where people have said Bruce was one of, if not THE, worst managers we've ever had.

 

Agree about those comments though. He doesn't do himself any favours!

[Keyblade]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I don't think anyone has said his style of football is amazing, the only argument is that it's effective and that Smith's at times, hasn't been much better. Which it hasn't

There have been plenty of times in the Steve Bruce thread where people have said Bruce was one of, if not THE, worst managers we've ever had.

 

Agree about those comments though. He doesn't do himself any favours!

I mean if we're talking effectiveness, Smith did get promoted where Bruce couldn't, and he had 2 bites at the cherry. With the same team in the same circumstances, Smith blew him out of the water in terms of both style and end result. It was night and day. I'm sure you remember the stark difference by the time we even played Norwich under Smith. By the time we played Derby away it was like 2 different teams. 

This season there are a lot of unique circumstances for both us and Newcastle so it's harder to make a direct comparison, but I guess in terms of raw numbers, he is about 6 points more effective at this stage of the season. Still a lot of football to be played though.

[Stevo985]

7 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I mean if we're talking effectiveness, Smith did get promoted where Bruce couldn't, and he had 2 bites at the cherry. With the same team in the same circumstances, Smith blew him out of the water in terms of both style and end result. It was night and day. I'm sure you remember the stark difference by the time we even played Norwich under Smith. By the time we played Derby away it was like 2 different teams. 

This season there are a lot of unique circumstances for both us and Newcastle so it's harder to make a direct comparison, but I guess in terms of raw numbers, he is about 6 points more effective at this stage of the season. Still a lot of football to be played though.

You seem to have taken my comments as some sort of comparison between Bruce and Smith, with Bruce winning.

I'll clarify that in no way do I rate Bruce at Villa higher than Smith at Villa. I'm thrilled we got rid of Bruce and got Smith.

 

Again, the only "defence" of Bruce seems to be people, including myself, saying he wasn't absolutely shit which if you readmost of this and the Steve Bruce thread, is the impression you'd get

He's a very very average manager who did a very very average job at Villa.