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In a match described world wide by pundits as happening in China, the north east giants Newcastle United take on the West Midlands behemoths Wolverhampton Wanderers. It's a battle for the ultimate victory, over 90 or thereabouts confirmed minutes of regulation football. The whole of Nanjing either will or won't be on the edge of their seats in anticipation for what many supporters could be calling the biggest football match to be happening at that precise moment in time in Nanjing China. Old scores will be settled at the Olympic Sports Centre, scores like 1-1 and 1-2 come to mind. Early team news suggests that it will be some arrangement of 11 vs another arrangement of 11 in this key football match as both teams lock horns in determining who will be the winner, if indeed there is one. This is being shown live on Sky and on several of the major football showing networks around the world, including the one that I have, so I will be watching this at the prime time of 8PM local time in Sydney, Australia. I'm prepared to be dazzled.

George Caulkin: In February last year, I was asked to write a piece about Aston Villa. They were second in the Sky Bet Championship and so the time seemed right to appraise how they’d got there and their readiness or otherwise to return to the Premier League. Speak to people in and around the club, I was told, gauge the mood, reflect the atmosphere. Perhaps I could give Steve Bruce a ring; after all, I’d known him for a long time. That last bit, though, was not on the agenda. Joe, Bruce’s dad, had just died and Sheenagh, his mother, was in hospital with a serious illness (from which she never recovered), and Villa’s manager was reeling, juggling his work with thrice-weekly trips up the motorway from his home in Cheshire back to Tyneside, where he was born and his parents still lived. In those circumstances, pushing for an interview would not have felt appropriate. So I talked to a couple of fans, arranged a chat with a member of Villa’s coaching staff and decided to drive to Birmingham, to stroll around Villa Park and to pop in to Bruce’s regular pre-match conference. I sent him a text as a courtesy, just to let him know I’d be there. Within 30 seconds, he rang. “Why are you coming all the way down here, son?” he asked, even though he was in the middle of the same journey. “Save yourself the bother. What do you need?” By the time the article appeared in the paper, it was no longer about Aston Villa. Bruce spoke searingly about “the horrible pain in the stomach that grief gives you,” his sense of “powerlessness.” Towards the end, Joe would often ask his son why he still put himself through the wringer of management. “It was his way of saying, ‘What are you doing, Steve? Are you mad?’” Bruce said. “We all ask that question of ourselves sometimes.” Perhaps this is not much of an anecdote but, in my experience, it is a small illustration of the kind of man Bruce is; considerate, helpful and fundamentally decent. None of which are qualifications to manage Newcastle United, although that is precisely the point. The people who say that Bruce is not good enough for Newcastle have got it all wrong; he is too good. Way too good for Mike Ashley’s works team. There are two reasons why Bruce, who has signed a three-year contract as head coach, should not be within a million miles of the job at St James’ Park. The first is that if Newcastle had even a modicum of ambition then Rafa Benítez would still be in the role, but after having the wit to appoint a manager who could still see the club in terms of potential and stature, they failed to understand what it entailed. That to improve means investment, imagination, speed of thought. After Benítez, almost any manager would represent a step down, but he was the exception at Newcastle not the rule. Take the Spaniard out of it and Bruce is following Alan Pardew and Steve McClaren, all English, all experienced, all greeted with either bemusement or hostility. In both emotional and footballing terms, Benítez held the club together, keeping them in the Premier League and giving supporters a reason to believe. That glue has dissolved. And so the second reason is more personal. Ashley’s Newcastle chews good people up; Benitez, Chris Hughton, Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan. If anyone thinks it will be different with Bruce ... well, the last 12 years provides compelling, distressing precedent. At best, the club is unconventional and at worst it is dysfunctional, incapable of putting two good decisions together. Something always lurks around the corner. The mood is noxious. Newcastle have lost Benítez, Ayoze Pérez has been sold to Leicester City for £30 million, Salomón Rondón, so impressive on loan from West Bromwich Albion last season, is not returning and they are yet to sign a player. Plenty of supporters are jettisoning season tickets, others are campaigning for a boycott of Newcastle’s first home match of the season. This is not fertile territory for optimism. It will be said that Bruce knows what he is getting into, that by working for Ashley he is complicit with the regime, but nobody knows; not really. Benítez believed he was joining a club with designs on Europe, but is now working in China. McClaren believed he could change things; within months of his appointment, he and Paul Simpson, were given written warnings after the first-team coach spoke about transfers in public. Bruce will back himself and so he should. “This is my boyhood club and it was my dad’s club, so this is a very special moment for me and my family,” he said today. Sheffield Wednesday and their supporters have a right to feel bruised, particularly regarding the timing of Bruce’s arrival and departure, but the 58-year-old has a chance to go home, into the Premier League. Like all managers, he will look at the peril and reckon he can wrestle with it. New additions will arrive, belatedly. Newcastle have long been fixated on Joelinton, Hoffenheim’s Brazilian forward, who will cost around £36 million. They pressed the 22-year-old on Benítez, who demurred; he liked the player, but not at anything like that price and, if there was that much money available, why not let him spent it on his own choices? Who makes the recruitment decisions will be interesting. And what about the club’s ‘takeover?’ Where does that now stand? At this mute club that shuns responsibility, everything Bruce says will be dissected and thrown back at him. He will be a very different figurehead to Benítez and, initially at least, the atmosphere will be toxic. As nufc.com, the independent fans website, put it, “this is the very opposite of ambition, but an appointment that nicely mirrors our grubby, unloved, derided shell of a football club”. I wish Bruce luck and victories. And I wish he wasn’t there.

A great bunch of lads.

It’s like some ridiculous badge of honour.

Love how any time Keys posts some bollocks half the replies are about him shagging his daughters mate, and the rest about his hirsute hands

Bruce out.

Oh Steve Wraith isn’t going to let any other baldy cunt get the limelight so he’s drafted this fake letter for some more attention

Not like the season starts in 3 weeks or anything

Interesting comment about Rafa thinking this new kid is worth nowhere near £36mil

Had no idea he’s written three terrible novels. Here is a review of one of them, it might cheer you up a bit. 😂 https://thesetpieces.com/features/sweeper-steve-bruce-review/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

i mean, fuck the fat cunt. he can do his best to destroy the club but i'm fucked if i'm going anywhere. maybe not the best logic, but it's our club, not his, and we'll be here long after he has a coronary

Christ, we need players but we’re not that desperate.

It's just for this tournament. The translation is "80% off".

Well there is a possibility that Sheffield Wednesday seek an injunction preventing him from starting the job. Which is the only way this disastrous pre-season could get any worse.

Did Sheff Weds not accept their resignations? I hope they take Ashley to the fuckin cleaners...

Kramer vs Kramer but the kid is a 58 year old booze Hound.

Is he still spouting philosophy on twitter? Dresses like a stand in uni lecturer these days too

He can get fucked too

FFS man

this is gonna be hilarious. perhaps even funnier than the big wheel episode of bottom.

Let's be honest. There was never a takeover

A lightning rod for fan discontent, some cynics might say.

Great news. Looking forward to next year's Championship scrap already when we might actually win a few games

Bad time of year to be calling us brethren. I think he nails it as British exceptionalism. So many people in the UK who never lived during the age of the empire have absolutely no idea of their country's place in the world. Yes, the UK is one of the bigger players but it no longer sits in the top tier of nations. Being part of the EU meant we were at least part of one of the major players, without them we have very little real influence.

I've left this for our irish brethren. Sums things up nicely. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1150431326006317058.html?fbclid=IwAR0oJ0TryhWcqq1Ps1EXe_sF0qy_L1W7EbztqfNhaJqNIghPV9PDYsBY_GI

There's every chance the Dutch will hold next year's Eurovision in Maastricht. I know it's not important in the grand scheme of things but I love a good bit of low-level trolling.

This Genesio patter is a bunch of leaked shite to make Wednesday hurry up. Hope they see through it and leave us in the shit tbh

It was 400 million until Chops passed Coral on the way home.

Finally he will have the support that he craved from Newcastle supporters.

Bruce won’t be doing any of the operating, whichever end of the market, Gloomy.