David Kelly

Fuck me he should be sacked for putting out that team alone. Hopefully he's putting nails in his own coffin here.

Anderson showed more promise in his short appearence than most of our midfielders have ever managed. Be nice to see him get some more game time. Other than that, the game was absolutely turgid although Carroll actually looked like a footballer again which was canny. Much better to see him playing rather than using Joelinton as our main striker if we're not going to play Wilson.

Well yes because Joelinton has had the benefit of the doubt from me for a long time. I'd been told since before he played for us that he wasn't a striker and it was painfully obvious he was being played out of position. I also knew Bruce was fucking useless before he arrived and again that's been painfully obvious. So I've been prepared to stand up for Joelinton but he's now not being used so much as a striker and he still looks hopelessly average at best. I'm still holding back a little bit because Bruce has clearly fucked his confidence, but he's showing so little it's hard to believe he'll ever turn out to be a premiership standard footballer. So on that basis I think I would have given Lewis time regardless of what he cost also. He's been very disapointing so far though. Mind I thought he looked very promising on his debut against West Ham so there's potentially a player there once he's deprogrammed from Bruce.

I think it's fair given his lack of anything. Lewis is still getting the benefit of the doubt from me because of Bruce but he needs to improve a lot or he'll go the same way as Jo.

I agree the way some of the fans have been with him has been poor, a lot of people weren't prepared to give him any chance at all. But we've just given away to Huddersfield a player who's only a year older than and has done just about as much as him but actually showed glimpses of a footballer. Unfortunately Jo hasn't managed that much.

He's not shown enough in any position to be worthy of a game though.

You can't just look at his performance this season in isolation though. Yes he was played out of position the majority of last season and he's woefully out of his depth as a target man, but his performances while better have been very average if we're being kind. We did pay tens of millions for him, he hasn't scored, he hasn't assisted and he hasn't played well. We can come up with all of the reasons we want to explain this but the facts say he has been an absolute disaster of a signing and he really doesn't deserve his place ahead of Gayle or Almiron or whoever else he's keeping out of the team.

Something funny definitely went on there. There's no way anyone has ever looked at him and thought £40m was a fair value for him. If we have paid that much there must be something else going on.

I mean the Joselu that played for us. Apparently he's done much better in Spain but even at the level he managed for us Joelinton is still a downgrade.

Wasn't he sub for Villa?

I've been trying to think of a time when we had a midfield worse than we have now. I think I have to go back to my first ever game when we had Gary Megson and Pat Heard playing.

Well that gives him a chance of being better than our lot.

I doubt the real fee was £40m but at half of that he's still probably our worst buy ever. I do agree with Fish that Bruce can make any of our players worse but I still can't see anything like a decent Premier League player in him. As has been mentioned before, we've managed to spend tens of millions to downgrade from Joselu. Mind I can only imagine how much worse Joselu would have been with Bruce coaching him.

Are either of these going to replace any of the donkeys we have in midfield?

If we lose to Sheffield we won't be that safe in the league though and we'll be on a hell of a downward trajectory.

I'm probably hating Bruce now more than Fat Sham. I don't know if that partially because I can't get to the games now (or even the pub to get pissed watching them) but we are a totally joyless experience now. Admittedly we were then too but at that point you could still see the possibility of a way forward.

It'll be interesting to see if there is actually any pressure on him after the Sheffield game. We look likely to crash out of the cup at the first hurdle and then give the Blades their first win of the season by next Tuesday night. Should that happen, for any sane person his position would have to finally become untenable. But Mike Ashley is the man who appointed Bruce despite everyone involved with the club knowing it made no sense at all so it's certainly not a foregone conclusion that he'd be under any pressure let alone get the boot.

That's not how you spell Bisto.

TBF Bruce's tactical changes only won us the game because his tactics from the second minute of the game were so shit he had to make the change. Unfortunately for them, West Brom are a relegation waiting to happen and yet we still allowed them to have the upper hand for large parts of the game. With their fragile confidence we should have been all over them like a rash after going one up so quickly but as per we just continued to pass backwards and failed to take countless opportunites to put the ball into the box until the point where we had two wingers playing fullback. On West Brom's side of things, I did wonder why Bilic took that Gallagher kid off who was pretty much running the game and looked a dead cert for a goal. But if you want to replace Bilic with Bruce you'd be more than welcome to him.

Aye for £1.5m he did a great job for us and ended up at a much higher standard than what I would have thought he'd reach. But if we'd signed him for £30m I don't think anyone would say he was value for money unless as a direct comparisson with Joelinton.

Was never a fan. He definitely has ability but more often than not he just gave away possession because he's a right fanny. Unlike Gloomy I always thought he was better off playing wider as if afforded him more space and less time playing with his back to goal. The spell he had after Christmas in his last season with us always seemed like a purple patch rather than any indication that he was ready to step up to a higher level, which sadly Leicester clearly are to us these days. It seems like his performances at Leicester have backed that up. Although I can't say I've seen much of them. I'd happily have him back instead of Joelinton, Gayle or Carroll though. Edit: The pressing that he did do ususally was a result of him losing the ball in the first place.

Did all of the locals not stare at you the whole time? The last time I was forced to go there that was how I found it. All of the semi intelligent mackems go out in Newcastle so it really is the dregs of the gene pool that go out there. It's like a night out in Royston Vasey if you're not local!

Well he took Southend down to league 2 last season and previously got Macclesfield two places above the relegation zone and tried to have them wound up for wages they owed him. So he sounds perfect for them.

It was inevitable that it would happen at some club sooner or later and I have no doubt Ashley is skimping on the messures put in place to prevent it, so it was inevitable we would be the club it happened at. I had no faith in us getting a win at Villa so this doesn't really effect that.

I'm not sure there's many managers still going that I'd want here less than him now. I mean I know it's certainly not impossible that he would bring some clown back from years out of the game given he did that with Kinnear but I can't actually see him doing it again. So the only person I can think of that would annoy me close to the level of Bruce would probably be Tim Sherwood. The problem is all he actually wants is to get shot of us now and as long as we're in the premier league Bruce will suit his purposes. Especially as it's very unlikely we're going to get any meaningful crowds in this season so he's at no risk of losing ticket sales.