Steve Bruce - officially confirmed (as Sheffield Wednesday boss)

[olaftab]

The word 'lesser' is the giveaway there. We're all in this division for a reason.

May be but all Leagues are made up of lesser or greater clubs. Differentiator is the ability to make your greater wherewithal work for you.

[Jimbo]

No, chrisw1. Arrogant to think we'd smash all the little clubs in our path to glory because of who, rather than what we are. But if you think simply throwing money at a basket case of a club automatically turns everything around, carry on in your delusion.

I never thought we'd smash all and sundry, but believing we had a good chance of going up is with a new manager and new players who lots of people were excited about is hardly arrogant.

And like it or not, spending money in football very often leads to success.  It's hardly delusional to think that buying the best players available will ultimately lead to success. 

Yet again, I didn't say thinking we might go up was arrogant (although given all the evidence of the past half a decade, it was perhaps a little foolhardy). I said thinking we'd batter lesser clubs because we're big Aston Villa was arrogant.

Yes, we spent a lot of money (although whether we bought the 'best players available' is questionable), but the figures aren't the important thing. The state of the club was. The culture of the club was.

We'd lost to 'lesser' clubs on a consistent basis for years. Many of them had spent less than us. Very few of them seemed intimidated by us. In fact many of them seemed to be pumped up by the prospect of giving us a bloody nose. It's still happening. And look where we are. No surprises here, no delusions.
 

I'm not quite sure what we're arguing about here.  People who made a 'reasoned judgement' that we would carry on being shit is fine.  But people who made a reasoned judgement that a team with a new owner, new manager, £50m of new players (whilst retaining the likes of Ayew, Grealish, Amavi, Gestede etc) were likely to go up are arrogant? 

It turns out the pessimists were right - you must be delighted.  But labelling people who were optimistic as arrogant is a unfair.

jesusc1. I give up. Try reading what I wrote, twice, again.

[Tuscans]

But it can't always be the manager, the coaches etc. 7 managers in 7 years, 4 in 2 years ... a skip load of assistants and coaches and one hell of a turnover of players. We can't always be making the same mistakes every single season.

[Gareth]

Obviously last night was a very poor performance and I think it's pretty obvious that it will take an amazing turnaround for us to get up to the top 6 however I am hoping the 2nd major surgery to the squad in 6 months will pay dividends come the summer.  Hopefully it will only be the case of needing to sort the goalkeepers and maybe add a centre half in the summer and this set of players will have 15+ games to develop an understanding and a pattern that will see us hit the ground running next season.

It has been pretty clear all season that the squad was not physically fit for the demands of this league so we haven't been able to play a style of pressing football or a system that would see us on the front foot not constantly fire fighting. 

Now Hogan is in Brucie can have the two up top that he wanted, whether he plays 4 in the middle or 3 & a number 10 is up to him but he has to find that right balance & he should be able to do that with the players he has now...important to remember that 3 of them have played 4 games between them so will take a few games to bed in.  Some of the reactions I was reading on Twitter last night were OTT it would have been amazing if it had been like flicking a switch....

Mentally there is still a concern, it has seemed a bit of a constant script this year - start well, miss a chance that should be buried, concede soft goal, fall apart - we are fragile and another challenge for Bruce is that we need that to be in the past when this season ends.

I still have full faith in Bruce, it would be foolhardy to change anything now...he needs to be able to work with this squad, make it more solid, more of a team that has a structure & like our opponents last night there was a level of trust amongst their players that they knew each other, what each other were doing that only comes with time & hard work on the training pitch.

As a fan base we are demanding and rightly so, we are big club however I think we have a percentage of fans who arrogantly thought we would steamroller this league by just turning up - this from a team that got relegated with such a shocking points tally was never likely - hopefully all the players signed were signed with the realism that this is an 18 month thing.

[kippaxvilla2]

We still haven't addressed the Goalkeeper situation - I don't think from the early signs he is much of an upgrade on Gollini.  The Central Defensive area is still wafer thin on quality.  And you could argue that (and that is unless RHM signs soon), the forward options are wafer thin also.

[paul_e]

Can someone tell me why, if us being shit away from home isn't because of the tactics chosen by Bruce, we've changed the midfield and attack almost completely (across the last 5 games) and yet players who have never played this way before are suddenly playing exactly like the players that weren't good enough?

If someone can explain that to me in a way that absolves Bruce of any responsibility then I'll accept the idea that we should give him at least until november/december to see where he can take things and if things are shit on the way then so be it but I just don't get why so many people are willing to separate us being shit from Bruce and put it down to anything else.

What the club has needed to do for a long long time is decide what it wants to be.  We have some fans who will see 3-4 passes and want to scream 'get it forward' and others who want us to be the barcelona of the midlands and plenty more who fill every space in between.  Then there are more still who couldn't give a shit so long as we score a few goals and win a few games.  There's just no expectation of what we're going to be so we don't know what type of manager we want so we just go for flavour of the month style appointments.  I don't see how Bruce is any different to Lambert, Sherwood, etc in that regard.

[Ads]

Chris he's on about me and won't let it drop because I was wrong. Flattering almost.

I hoped we'd batter everybody, who wouldn't? I wanted us to batter everybody. Again, who wouldn't? I get dismayed at unrelenting negativity, as that's just me in life and general. Cheer up, you only get one 1st February 2017 and all that jazz.

I thought it would be nice to be the big boys for a change and by and large we are. We take more away than anybody else and they get more turning up because it's us. Sheffield Wednesday had a bumper crowd and celebrated like they'd won the league, which was almost nice after half a decade of being a "so what?".

I don't like the other clubs. They're tin pot, they're Mickey Mouse. Fuck em' all, they should have washed away with the flood. Give me a club and I can find a reason to dislike them, even for just 2 days of the season.

Jimbo takes issue with this, but he liked the old library, so what does he know.

[damon loves JT]

And I would draw a big, thick line between the attitude of supporters towards the club, and players towards the opposition.

If you go onto that pitch in a claret and blue shirt, you have to believe you are going to win. You can't win without dominating. It's not like going to a job interview. If your profession is to compete, and to win, there has to be a rock-hard confidence in your ability somewhere or you are not going to survive.

[Jimbo]

The word 'lesser' is the giveaway there. We're all in this division for a reason.

May be but all Leagues are made up of lesser or greater clubs. Differentiator is the ability to make your greater wherewithal work for you.

This comment shines through. Ain't no use in being a big club if you don't know how to behave like one on the pitch as well as off it.

[Brend'Watkins]

I think it's fairly simple for Bruce.  Just think back to the performance against Brighton.  Tel the squad that's the minimum he wants from them and then work to steadily improve on that. How we have not managed to reproduce that display of form is puzzling.

[ChicagoLion]

What sums us up was the 2 players Kodija and Adomah I think that go to ground and lie on the floor as Brentford win the ball and go on the attack and score.
They would rather act injured/aggrieved  because they did not get a decision from the ref.

[ChicagoLion]

I think it's fairly simple for Bruce.  Just think back to the performance against Brighton.  Tel the squad that's the minimum he wants from them and then work to steadily improve on that. How we have not managed to reproduce that display of form is puzzling.

The first half against PNE? the problem seems to be,  that as soon as the opposition change or up their game he appears wanting/
This I believe is the criticism that Blose fans said of him.

[chrisw1]

Can someone tell me why, if us being shit away from home isn't because of the tactics chosen by Bruce, we've changed the midfield and attack almost completely (across the last 5 games) and yet players who have never played this way before are suddenly playing exactly like the players that weren't good enough?

If someone can explain that to me in a way that absolves Bruce of any responsibility then I'll accept the idea that we should give him at least until november/december to see where he can take things and if things are shit on the way then so be it but I just don't get why so many people are willing to separate us being shit from Bruce and put it down to anything else.

What the club has needed to do for a long long time is decide what it wants to be.  We have some fans who will see 3-4 passes and want to scream 'get it forward' and others who want us to be the barcelona of the midlands and plenty more who fill every space in between.  Then there are more still who couldn't give a shit so long as we score a few goals and win a few games.  There's just no expectation of what we're going to be so we don't know what type of manager we want so we just go for flavour of the month style appointments.  I don't see how Bruce is any different to Lambert, Sherwood, etc in that regard.

I actually agree Bruce does have to take a lot of responsibility for the poor performances.  He had the mitigation that he was working with someone else's team devoid of any quality in midfield.  Even so, he should have done better. 

Last night was diabolical.  But to not take into account the fact that two players arrived this week, one from abroad and having not played for several weeks and third last week with 70mins football under his belt is a bit silly.  We have invested heavily, Bruce now has his team.  It's unreasonable to demand instant success but there needs to be massive improvement between now and the summer for him to deserve another season.

[RussellC]

It's a mentality thing isn't it? He needs to get the players approaching each game like the underdog. Similar to how Ranieri galvanized Leicester last season.

After the first 10 minutes last season the players just expected to automatically win the game and stopped thinking for themselves. For all of the Captains that we've signed, we're still desperately short of some 'in-game management" in the side. A Petrov or a Barry would be invaluable at this stage. Jesus, even a player who ran the game like Ryan Woods did last night would be a huge help.

[chrisw1]

You have to think that in buying Lansbury & Hourihane he thought he was doing just that.  Hopefully he was and they will grow into the role.