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

bobbyshinton

By bobbyshinton,
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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

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essembeeofsunderland

essembeeofsunderland 811

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, wykikitoon said:

Alan Brazil and dribble chin agbonlawhore both rimming out bruce this morning. Fucking clowns. 

I switched on this morning and they were discussing the Leicester player scoring 4 goals the other night.

Agbonlawhore ‘Have you ever score 4 Alan’

Alan Brazil ‘ I once scored 5 against Channon,Ball and Keegan’s Southampton’

Agbonlawhore ‘ Did you score the perfect hat trick,left foot,right foot and head’

Alan Brazil ‘ No,I didn’t score any with me head’ 

Agbonlawhore ‘Why’  

WHY? Bring back Mike Parry.At least you got a laugh when he was on with Brazil.

 

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Howmanheyman

Howmanheyman 33267

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5 minutes ago, Monkeys Fist said:

Are you already camped at the bar in the Centurion? 

Being vetted as we speak. 

 

Talkshite: "Name?"

 

Essembee: "Brian"

 

Talkshite: "Surname?"

 

Essembee: "Damaged"

 

Talkshite: "Specialised subject?"

 

Essembee: "May 1970, Sunderland AFC and cowardly acts."

 

Talkshite: "For or against the takeov...."

 

Essembee: "I haven't finished. Attacks on Sunderland chairman, drink driving Sunderland chairman and killing threads."

 

Talkshite: "For or against the takeov...."

 

Essembee: "You heard it here first."

 

Talkshite: "Security!"

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Meenzer

Meenzer 15550

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18 minutes ago, Howmanheyman said:

Being vetted as we speak. 

 

Talkshite: "Name?"

 

Essembee: "Brian"

 

Talkshite: "Surname?"

 

Essembee: "Damaged"

 

Talkshite: "Specialised subject?"

 

Essembee: "May 1970, Sunderland AFC and cowardly acts."

 

Talkshite: "For or against the takeov...."

 

Essembee: "I haven't finished. Attacks on Sunderland chairman, drink driving Sunderland chairman and killing threads."

 

Talkshite: "For or against the takeov...."

 

Essembee: "You heard it here first."

 

Talkshite: "Security!"

 

Good post.

 

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Andrew

Andrew 4771

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Quote

“Standards.”

 

It was the word Graeme Jones repeated at his first team meeting as Newcastle United’s interim head coach.

 

Standards.

 

In the difficult position the team have been in — with uncertainty swirling around the club, with head coach Steve Bruce under pressure then limping on and then finally put out of everybody’s misery — it is understandable if intensity and focus had blurred at the training ground, if specifics had been lost.

 

“He brought everyone together,” one observer said of Jones. “He just talked about standards.”

 

It was a word Jones used time and again in his pre-match press conference on Friday. “I’m only interested in trying to get results and having standards that are really, really high,” he said. And, “I believe in having your standards high. I know what elite looks like.” And, “Standards won’t slip, I can assure you of that.” And, “I think players gain confidence from detail sometimes.” And, “Twenty people will know exactly what their jobs are tomorrow.”

 

There are standards, and then there is the question of whether Newcastle are of good enough standard to be any better than where they are. Within the squad, there is a feeling they should be higher in the table than the 19th place they occupy – one probably shared by the fanbase – but they are still a mishmash of players and systems that do not quite fit together.

 

Saturday’s 1-1 away to Crystal Palace was an echo of when Rafa Benitez brought Newcastle up from the Championship four years ago — an attempt to stiffen up and eke things out.

Three days is not a lot of time for Jones to make a difference, but it was just about enough for Newcastle to stop the rot.

 

After two defeats in succession, there was a draw at Selhurst Park — an ugly point that saw the team come from behind and then hold on for the last 25 minutes. There was a fine overhead-kick equaliser by Callum Wilson, balanced by the punishment they took time and again from Palace front man Christian Benteke. The truth is, they needed more.

 

“Jones has already had a positive impact on the team,” one source close to Newcastle’s players said at the end of last week. “He is already encouraging them to play more positively and be more proactive in their outlook on the pitch. He’s clearly communicating his specific ideas – he isn’t changing things drastically but he is keen to get across concise instructions and to develop more of a cohesive game plan.”

 

Yet this was not an expansive version of Newcastle. Jones put the handbrake on, not only reverting to the three-man defence with which Bruce began this season, but getting them to stiffen up and sit back. The performance was stolid, with only 25 per cent of the possession, but this back-to-basics philosophy was understandable given the team’s atrocious defensive record. Even so, Benteke should have had more than his one goal and the officiating was generous to Newcastle.

 

“I tried to shore it up a bit and not concede as many goals,” Jones said. “I think that worked today. We have to be better. I have to give the lads credit, mentally and physically. Tactically I thought we were excellent, especially defensively. It’s far from where I want to be, on the ball in particular, but off the ball, I was pleased with the understanding of our roles. There is loads of work to do but it’s somewhere to start. You have to respect a point in the Premier League.”

 

Yet this notion of a start is problematic. Newcastle are nine games in and still winless and above only Norwich. Jones has been around for all of that. For too long, they have been themeless, scratching around to find an answer, then casting it aside and starting again, front foot, back foot, shoot themselves in the foot.

 

While Bruce is now gone, this was another stop on that endless loop, asking players to go from forward to reverse in consecutive fixtures.

 

Ahead of the Tottenham Hotspur match last weekend, Bruce is understood to have told his players that he knew – just like everybody knew – he was on his way out and so for that game, the first under new owners and likely to be his last, they should give fans “what they want”.

 

And for 10 minutes, Newcastle were breathtaking, urged on by their re-energised crowd. Spurs wobbled. And then the fragility of this tactic became clear. Two of Bruce’s forwards pressed; the third, Allan Saint-Maximin, can or will not do it. Off the ball, he never comes alive. The team’s midfielders wanted to press and tried to, but they were also caught, knowing that the instinct of the defence behind them was still to drop back. Space was conceded everywhere.

By the end of that 3-2 defeat – way before the end – Newcastle looked and felt tired again. Losing is exhausting and so is conceding goals, and come full-time against Spurs the team had the worst defensive record in the Premier League. Whatever plan there was, it had evaporated, any structure petering out.

 

Perhaps it was a reflection of the circumstances as much as anything else, but it also felt symptomatic of the worst elements of the Bruce era: sloppy and shapeless.

Failing regimes can be like that and the end brought energy and relief.

 

On Wednesday morning, Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi had arrived at the training ground and called the players in to see them for the first formal meeting of the new regime (the previous week, it had been handshakes and hellos in the canteen). “Lovely to meet you all finally,” Staveley is understood have to said. “As of two minutes ago, Steve Bruce is no longer your manager.”

 

It is not as if the announcement was greeted with euphoria – plenty of players have since texted goodbyes and good lucks to Bruce – but it did buoy the mood. Poor results always damage a manager’s authority, but it had leaked away further in the week and a half post-takeover, with everybody understanding that change was coming. That awkwardness made for poor preparation for the Tottenham game; players crave certainty and there was none of it.

 

“It’s given everybody a lift,” one observer says. “There’s still some uncertainty, because we don’t have a permanent manager. He might have a completely different attitude and he’s someone else to win over. But Graeme knows what he’s doing, he also has the passion to improve you and he’s good tactically. The manager wasn’t taking the meetings and he didn’t do the motivational talks. Graeme can do all the rest.”

 

Another says, “There is still some nervousness among the players about what comes next. They still don’t know who the next manager is going to be. Nerves have calmed a little bit, but what they crave is normality. They still don’t have that.”

Staveley also talked about investment, about having long-term plans for infrastructure and the training ground, and said that they would be consulted moving forwards. The new ownership also plan to talk to players individually over the next few weeks and months, to find out how they see their futures and to discuss their contractual situations. Those things will all help, furthering the impression of them saying all the right things. The doing is what matters now.

 

Jones is “intense” and “completely different,” to Bruce, one source says. He talks in “football speak — not in a way that it sounds like he has swallowed a coaching manual, but in more specific detail than Bruce ever did. It’s like chalk and cheese.”

Which is all very well, except that Newcastle still do not have a philosophy, or anybody setting and determining a philosophy. They do not have permanence. The new owners know what they want the club to be – the biggest and the best – but they are not so sure about how to get there. Not yet.

 

It is a pressing issue because, as things stand, they are pointing in the wrong direction.

 

Jones has his standards and they are both necessary and welcome, but when he said he “would like us to be better on the ball but that doesn’t happen overnight”, it could have been Bruce talking.

A couple of games in and it already feels like the 18 months it took for Newcastle’s takeover to go through was the easy bit.

 

They are desperate for January and it looks a long way off. There is so much to do.

 

Caulkin in the Athletic. I find the bit in bold quite funny, and completely as expected, Jones actually gives the players instructions in football speak :lol:

 

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Gemmill

Gemmill 44931

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I don't doubt that you need thick skin to be a football manager, but to be an absolutely terrible football manager and stick around long enough to manager your 1,000th game, you need both incredibly thick skin and bulletproof self belief. 

 

It's not the fault of the fans of the clubs he manages that Bruce has neither. 

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