Jump to content

Fat waste of space, tactically inept cabbage head Steve Bruce sacked by Newcastle United

bobbyshinton

By bobbyshinton,
in Newcastle Forum

 Share

Recommended Posts

RobinRobin

RobinRobin 11263

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, The Fish said:

I honestly don't think a pundit should be slating managers, that's for local journalists and the fans. But a pundit shouldn't be defending a manager either. If Bruce's Newcastle is playing badly, say so. I don't need you to call him a feckless cunt as part of the review, but don't tell me he'll make us entertaining when his entire career shows that's not true. Don't tell me the defence is terrible and critique just how bad, then absolve Bruce of responsibility.

And don't just say, in the coach's defence, "I like Steve".  That is not a pundit's remit.  That's his family's remit (as long as it is a good family of course).

  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 4.5k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

spongebob toonpants
spongebob toonpants
Tom
Tom
ewerk
ewerk

I know we're all celebrating but no matter what you think of him he's a human being. Yes we all know he'll a useless cunt but to go through months of abuse and then receive this crushing news this mor

Posted Images

The Fish

The Fish 10857

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, RobinRobin said:

And don't just say, in the coach's defence, "I like Steve".  That is not a pundit's remit.  That's his family's remit (as long as it is a good family of course).

I wonder if that's a British thing? If you criticise someone's ability, you have to praise their personality? Happens loads at work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
sammynb

sammynb 3355

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, The Fish said:

I wonder if that's a British thing? If you criticise someone's ability, you have to praise their personality? Happens loads at work.

 

No, that's just a manners thing.

But the thing with manners is it is a two way street and someone taking a dump on your front lawn doesn't deserve manners in return.

Problem is, none of the pundits are Newcastle fans, so they are happy watching their old cunty mate take a dump on our front lawn.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
essembeeofsunderland

essembeeofsunderland 811

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, The Fish said:

I wonder if that's a British thing? If you criticise someone's ability, you have to praise their personality? Happens loads at work.

It’s the British thing to do when a British pundit is talking about a British manager who’s struggling (shit ).Why say ‘look I like Steve Bruce but......’ . They could be sitting next to them in a tv or radio studio a week later.It’s similar when a British player puts in an horrific tackle.’It didn’t look good’ .’ If he watches that again he’ll be disappointed’ .’ Look,we know he’s not that type of player’ .’ It was a forwards tackle’ . Rarely after an unknown foreign player has gone in to injure the player.When one of their pals is sacked it’s ‘ Results weren’t good’ .Every relatively unknown foreign manager ‘ deserved to lose his job.He should never have been appointed.He has a poor record in management’ .A pundit should say it the way it is,the way he sees it.No one worse than John Anderson on BBC Newcastle Total Sport.Whenever he’s asked if Brucey should be sacked it’s ‘ Err.......err....but who would you want to replace him,who would come’ .Cowards they are,COWARDS !!!
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
The Fish

The Fish 10857

Posted
Posted

Re the last bit, there must be plenty of managers who'd take the job. Even under these conditions. Among them there must plenty who'd do a better job than Bruce. 

 

Howe might not be great at setting up a defence, but he'd get the forwards working. And with the personnel we have at the back, I don't think improving our defending is the priority.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
essembeeofsunderland

essembeeofsunderland 811

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, The Fish said:

Re the last bit, there must be plenty of managers who'd take the job. Even under these conditions. Among them there must plenty who'd do a better job than Bruce. 

 

Howe might not be great at setting up a defence, but he'd get the forwards working. And with the personnel we have at the back, I don't think improving our defending is the priority.

I agree,plenty would take the job.If it doesn’t work out blame the fans and the coronavirus .As for doing better than Brucey,well that surely wouldn’t be hard,if the players want to be part of it.It wouldn’t be hard to improve the defence.Tell them not to allow the opposition wide men time on the ball to get crosses in and stop turning their backs !! 
Good point about Howe getting the forwards and our attacking players working.When you think about it,it’s basic stuff.Support the forwards and get close to the opposition’s attacking players.We need ‘legs’ in midfield.Do we not have a midfielder or two who have ‘engines’.Can we not sign a lower league player who is box to box ,with limited ability in necessary.Anyone who can get close to opposition midfield players? No matter what the opposition,if they decide to get on the front front we struggle to get close to them.Long Longstaff,Shelvey and Hendrick don’t close down or get forward.We play five at the back with two holding midfield players ad we still look a shambles when the opposition go on the front foot.We have no leader.Who does the bollocking,who does the organising,who drives the team forward vocally or through ability.How many actually put a shift in every week?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ewerk

ewerk 30602

Posted
Posted

As you'd expect, he gives Bruce a light touch.

Quote

This hurts. It hurts the eyes, it hurts the heart and it hurts the soul.

Newcastle United are a difficult club; to watch, to be around and to manage and so this is a difficult column to write, because it blurs a few lines in my personal and professional existence. They’re the team I support and the team I played for and now my job is to analyse, to say it as I see it. What I see – and what I feel – is an emptiness, a club that simply exists.

What I saw against Sheffield United the other night was barely even that. Did anybody check for a pulse? Facing a team that are rock bottom of the Premier League, that had failed to win all season, Newcastle were bloody awful. There’s no getting away from it — that first half was as bad as it gets, compounded when Ryan Fraser was sent off for two pathetic yellow cards, two nonsense tackles. The players have to take some responsibility, but there are no excuses.

Newcastle remain 15th in the table, eight points off the bottom three. They are in a run of eight games without a victory, a sequence which has seen them get thrashed 5-2 by Leeds United, draw with Fulham, lose to Sheffield United and go out of both domestic cup competitions, including a dismal defeat by Brentford. They have also played Manchester City, Liverpool and Leicester City, but it leaves Steve Bruce under massive pressure from an angry and anguished fanbase.

None of that helps my own discomfort because the head coach — yes, head coach, not manager —  is a friend of mine and the same goes for Steve Harper, the first-team coach. I know the human beings behind the titles and so I know how much they care, how desperate they are to do well, how much they and their families feel it, too. To repeat: Newcastle are a difficult club, largely because of their difficult owner, and if this difficult column has a point, it is to explain that difficulty and put it into context. Like I said, it hurts.

For those of you who are not Newcastle fans, perhaps you see a club that is relatively stable, financially secure, unlikely to go down, middle of the road. Perhaps you hear all this noise around it, these howls of disapproval at Mike Ashley, at the way the team are playing. Perhaps you read about supporters being permanently in revolt, harking back to other eras, demanding the impossible. And perhaps you ask yourself: what the hell is this?

The reality is different. There is no expectation of success at Newcastle. We haven’t won anything of note since 1969 and we haven’t won a domestic trophy since the FA Cup in 1955. Jesus Christ — 1955! The “deluded Geordie expectation” is one of those great footballing myths. But this is no longer the same club that I captained, where I played alongside Rob Lee, Les Ferdinand, David Ginola, that was managed by Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson. This is no longer a club of ambition.

So why the discord, why that noise? And the answer to that is hope. Newcastle supporters want hope. They want a bit of their club back, rather than this hollow, shallow, lifeless, soulless shell. That hope has gone and it has been ground out of them by an ownership that has different thoughts and ideas and different ambitions, if you can call it that. You need something to believe in, to buy into, a grand plan, a dream, a concept. You want it to represent you.

Newcastle do not do that and it’s probably lost them a generation of fans, people who have thought over the last decade and more, ‘I’ve had enough of this. I don’t enjoy it any more’. All of us know men and women like that. At a club which is known for its loud and passionate support, 10,000 part season tickets were given away last season. I tell myself not to — there is no worth in looking back — but it’s hard not to contrast it with the (relatively) recent past, when a horde clamoured to get in.

There have been too many bad decisions to go into, but it explains why there was so much excitement about a takeover last year, about the prospect of something, anything, different. Hope will not return — not in any meaningful way — until there’s a change at the top of the club, whose stadium and training ground is beginning to look tatty and old. And because that change did not happen, this season has felt like the worst of hangovers, when everybody is tired and irritable.

The football, by and large, has followed suit. Newcastle are not a good watch, to put it mildly. They haven’t been for a long while. And so they haven’t changed the mood or the story. Given everything he had to deal with, with the circumstances he walked into — a feeling of depression, a lack of goals, the lack of a striker — Steve deserved credit last season, particularly in terms of where they finished, but it is not a team which provides uplift.

There should be some mitigation this time, as well — COVID-19, the number of games, the lack of pre-season — and what really irks me is how little protection Steve has received from the people above him. Where is Lee Charnley (the managing director)? What happened to that statement of his where he admitted the error of not communicating with fans? Where is his backing for the manager? Where is the strategy? Come on, Lee, where are you? Where is anyone, aside from Steve?

I suppose I should clarify this isn’t something I’ve spoken to Steve about and I wouldn’t want to. When we have conversations now it’s not about formations or results, it’s ‘How’s things, what are you up to?’ But I can’t believe he’s having to deal with questions about furloughing staff, giving tickets away, about coronavirus, about a takeover. These shouldn’t be issues for the manager. It’s a tough and lonely enough job as it is. The point is, he’s on his own.

And this was why I said at the time that I wish Steve hadn’t replaced Rafa Benitez, that I had grave reservations about what might happen down the road. The road leads here. It would have been the same if somebody else had come in and it will be the same for the next manager and the one after that if nothing else changes, because it’s the way Newcastle are built under Ashley. The manager takes it all on his shoulders; a concentration of anger, stretching back years.

The fact that Rafa left for the reasons he did, tells you what a difficult club it is, but Steve wanted to manage Newcastle and I respected that and left him to it. I can certainly understand it. I had two months in the role in 2009 and my experience of the dysfunction was limited to hearing about how happy they were with me, to making plans for the future, to never hearing back from them again. No phone call, no postcard, no flowers. I can laugh about it now. I wasn’t laughing then.

I never got to experience their transfer policy or their interesting approach to recruitment; when Steve walked in, Newcastle were already committed to signing Joelinton at a cost of £40 million. That tells you something, too. And it tells you something else that Joelinton and Miguel Almiron — more than £60 million of forwards — stayed on the substitutes bench at Bramall Lane, when the team were desperate for a goal and for a win that did not come.

Once you’re in a rut it’s difficult to shake yourself loose, so there has to be concern about the run we’re on, although I still think we’ll have enough to avoid relegation. The fact I’m even writing that is part of the issue. When Steve said not too long ago that his remit was to keep the team up, he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, but hearing it is painful, demoralising, horrible. For a club like Newcastle, just to survive …

In most regards, I’m the same as any other fan, barring that I’ve got a couple of pals on the coaching staff. I’m longing for us to do well, to bring in reinforcements, for some legs in midfield, for some attacking football, that bit of creativity. I’m well aware that everything I say about the club is magnified because of my history there, but Steve has chosen one life and I’ve chosen another and I also have to be critical and analytical and true to myself.

Steve did say he was going to take the cups seriously and he has put stronger teams out, but this idea that getting to a couple of quarter-finals should be ranked as an achievement? Goodness me, that’s how it’s bad it’s become. And what didn’t help his cause is that performance against Championship Brentford when Newcastle went out so meekly, with no fight at all. The one or two positive signs — like getting further up the pitch — are blown away.

When it’s crap I’ll say it’s crap — I wouldn’t be doing my job otherwise — and Sheffield United was a dreadful night. I don’t think Newcastle have a brilliant squad, but for Chris Wilder’s team to have as much possession as they did, to look as good as they did, is not acceptable. It invites scrutiny and invites pressure and it fuels the anger. You have to accept the criticism coming your way and Steve has been in the game long enough to understand that.

This is not the Newcastle United we all want and this is not the Newcastle United we should accept and that’s why there’s so much disappointment and disquiet and hurt. That’s why the manager always becomes the focal point. It’s a club which has no real relationship with its supporters. It’s a club that’s creaking, that’s existing and very little else. It needs hope again. It needs love.

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Howmanheyman

Howmanheyman 33180

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, essembeeofsunderland said:

Who the fuck mentioned 1985? I mean the year we took it,TOOK IT !!!! 

Poor essembee has been taking the fulwell for fifty years now. (Time to stand down now, soldier and return to headquarters. Mission accomplished and home for bacon and eggs). :good:

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Chaser

Chaser 1207

Posted
Posted

Hes right in that it'll just be rinse and repeat next time and the time after that. It still ultimately all falls on Ashley. Bruce was just another one desperate to get his hands on the rudder for as long as he could. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
essembeeofsunderland

essembeeofsunderland 811

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Howmanheyman said:

Poor essembee has been taking the fulwell for fifty years now. (Time to stand down now, soldier and return to headquarters. Mission accomplished and home for bacon and eggs). :good:

Impossible to switch off in my line of business.Took the bastard good and proper in 1970.Too shameful for the makems to discuss on rtg.

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
RobinRobin

RobinRobin 11263

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Dr Gloom said:

If we’re lucky 

 

99AD6D09-0C0F-440C-B856-69D90FAC2763.jpeg

I genuinely thought he was dead ...

 

 

 

 

 

... not that being dead would make him worse than the current cabbage.

Edited by RobinRobin
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Andrew changed the title to Fat waste of space, tactically inept cabbage head Steve Bruce sacked by Newcastle United

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.

  I accept