Saw this good article from the Guardian last night - it is from Sunday. It's a bit odd because the headline is we should stick with him, but then goes on to evaluate the job he has truly done and doesn;t cover him in glory! It's the first reall press aerticle I've seen that actually assesses that he should have done better......
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jul/22/aston-villa-new-regime-steve-bruce-uncertainty"Aston Villa should stick with steady Steve Bruce after recent turmoil
Bruce ultimately failed to deliver promotion last season but may be best placed to keep the team on track, even with new investors and financial worries eased
Nick Miller
@NickMiller79
Sun 22 Jul 2018 18.19 BST Last modified on Sun 22 Jul 2018 19.00 BST
For every participant, the Championship play-off final always has plenty riding on it. This year’s edition was no different, but it was not until after Fulham’s 1-0 victory that it really emerged just how much of a death-or-glory game it had been for Aston Villa.
In most cases a bid for promotion can empty even the most bulging of owners’ wallets. For Villa, it resulted in them having to mortgage the car park to pay a tax bill.
The extent of Villa’s financial problems was shocking, but at the same time not that surprising. They had, after all, spent freely after relegation from the Premier League in 2016. Fuelled by desperation to return to the top flight and new owner Tony Xia’s bullish suggestion that not just one, but maybe even two or more Champions League titles could eventually be won, something like £72m was spent on transfer fees in that first season in the Championship, topped up by a series of high-profile free and loan signings on significant wages in the second.
Villa rolled the dice and prayed, but when they opened their eyes they found that not only had they failed to get double sixes, the dice had bounced off the table and their wallet was empty.
Things came to a head when the club missed a deadline for a tax bill in May and another one is coming up at the end of July. Borrowing money against land near Villa Park, currently used as a car park, looked like a desperate move, but desperate was how things were looking until the end of last week.
On Friday, it was announced that a company co-owned by the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris and American financier Wes Edens (who co-owns the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team) had purchased a majority stake in the club. Xia will remain as co-chairman, but there was a pointed element to the section of Edens and Sawiris’s statement upon announcing the deal, when they said they “look forward to working with Dr Tony to undertake a thorough assessment and evaluation of the club in the coming weeks”.
This obviously comes as a relief, but amid all everything, Villa still have to play some football soon, starting on 6 August. Will they be able to vaguely compete? Plenty hinges on whether they will keep hold of their best players, with Jack Grealish and James Chester the two most obvious targets for other clubs. Before the investment, the departure of both seemed inevitable. Now, it’s less so but still possible: Villa still have to cut their cloth, even if the money will now go to balancing the books or even recruiting new players, rather than paying a tax bill.
Whatever their squad looks like, a steady leader is required, and you might think they couldn’t have a better man than Steve Bruce. But among the chaos of the summer, something that isn’t being discussed quite as much is what sort of job he has actually done over the last couple of years.
Bruce arrived at Villa Park on 12 October 2016, a week after Neil Warnock was appointed as Cardiff manager. Villa were not in a good way, 19th in the table following Roberto Di Matteo’s brief spell in charge, but they were better off than Cardiff, who were 23rd. Spin forward 18 months, and with a fraction of the resources Cardiff won automatic promotion while Villa barely showed up at Wembley.
One is always naturally reticent to lay into a man who has endured such a distressing year personally, the death of both parents between February and April putting into stark perspective the struggles of a football team. It was frankly a near miracle that he got to the end of the season, given what he went through, and when you consider that many of his expensive players underperformed last season, there are mitigating factors. But ultimately Bruce could not get perhaps the most expensive and experienced team the Championship has ever seen promoted. By cold, objective standards, he failed.
And yet there seems little point in getting rid of him, firstly because they do not need the extra expense, but who could they guarantee would do a better job? In fact, it might actually be possible that Bruce may do better under more difficult circumstances this season, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.
Previously his best work has generally been done with underdog teams, and listening to him over the last two years it sounds like he’s been trying to do the same at Villa. Unsurprisingly, that did not work too well, but it is much easier to convince the world you are scrappy underdogs when you have had to mortgage the car park. Plus, even by the division’s anarchic standards this season’s Championship looks extremely open: an optimist could just about convince themselves that Villa have a chance of doing OK despite everything.
With all that has happened since that day at Wembley, it is almost easy to forget that Aston Villa’s season starts soon. They should have been celebrating a return to the Premier League, but instead uncertainty, despite the good news of last week, hangs over them. And more than anything else, also a sense that it need not have been like this."
