Bruce Sacked at last (now official)

[PeterWithe]

Putting the calamitous errors to one side for a minute I think last night showed the extent of the task quite openly...we were playing ok, getting a decent pressure on the opposition when they had the ball but the moment we wanted to go forward with a bit of pace we looked like strangers who had to pause before identifying an option to pass to.  Hopefully that will improve with time but we are scarily pedestrian with the ball which makes us easy to play against. 

 

I made much the same point last night as well as saying we are also pedestrian without the ball, too slow to press, and if that isn't the plan, then too slow to get back into position meaning opposing midfielders get beyond us too easily.

I'm sure I read, I cant mind where now, that SB had identified that we lacked players who were able to carry the ball through the midfield to increase attacking numbers. The new players dont appear to have solved that, Lansbury is in shaky form but looks a fine player, but one who sees an early pass and plays it. Houlihane looks more like a Peter Whittingham type, looks decent on set pices and is capable of hitting early crosses but doesn't look quick enough or strong enough to make a difference when we are under the cosh. Benny looks just plain poor, there to make up the numbers.
 
All managers make poor signings but SB hasn't been helped by none of his signings hitting the ground running and now they seem to be infected by the losing Villa mentality.

[ClaretAndBlueBlood]

I worry about us for next season. My impression, and I haven't researched stats to back this up so it may be wrong, is that teams seem to get worse the longer that Bruce remains with them. I worry about his recruitment so I'm not that confident that he will be able to turn it round and get us in the mix for promotion next season.

A glaring hole for me is that he has just gone out and bought to strengthen the midfield but has left us light up front. And amongst the midfielders he has bought, he didn't get anyone as backup for the Jedi when he had already been struggling with fitness and there must be doubts about his ability to play 3 games a week

I wasn't keen on him being appointed our manager in the first place because he is very much more of the same and I thought it was a good opportunity to go for a new approach. But once he was appointed then I thought maybe as a short term fix to get us back up. Now I am doubting that

I thought it was STEVE round and scouting team identifying and recruiting with Keith wyness with lesser involvement from Bruce ?

which brings me back to a point I made on the Steve Round thread when he was appointed. Why do people think he is qualified to be a director of football when up to now, the most important job he has done is been Moyes' assistant

He has a qualification in sport and business management, which covers all the elements of a Technical Director's job. He has numerous F.A. coaching and sport science qualifications. He's worked more or less continuously in coaching for 22 years, all at top two division clubs including Manchester United, Newcastle and Everton.

Let me turn the question around. Who did you think we were going to appoint as a Technical Director as a club in rapid decline, in the second tier? There aren't that many in this country with specific experience of that job as there haven't been that many clubs operating with such a role.

Round's job is around overhauling the scouting, sports science, academy, medical etc departments. That isn't going to be work that is visible in less than six months. Starting to moan about him at this stage really is scraping the barrel.

its a big leap going from assistant manager to DOF is the point I am making, I have no idea if he will be good at it or not, but its another gamble. And yes I agree, its a longer term appointment to a certain extent but if he is having a large say in signings then he also needs to be successful in the short term aspect of the job

[KRS]

So Blackburn have just sacked Owen Coyle with a better record than Bruce...

Dec: DLLLLD
Jan: WLD (plus 2 wins in the Cups)
Feb: LWDLL

...they are 7pts behind us and well in the relegation battle in 23rd place so must be looking for a new manager bounce.

[adrenachrome]

These players need to bond before they can gel before they can click. The Udders Field manager knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Make the ****s camp out in the Black Mountains for a few days and set a few wolves loose.

Let's be honest: they should be capable of organizing themselves without direction from the manager. We have former captains all over the shop. They are not callow kids.

Take them on a bondage session to somewhere like Dometria's Dungeon in Brighton or the Nut Cracker Suite in Noo Yoik and nail their schlongs to a block of wood and plug them into the mains until they light up like pinball machines.

[Chico Hamilton III]

Would our current league position be the lowest since 1972? The last time we were this shit, Pele was playing a friendly at Villa Park.

[Villatillidie25]

These players need to bond before they can gel before they can click. The Udders Field manager knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Make the ****s camp out in the Black Mountains for a few days and set a few wolves loose.

Let's be honest: they should be capable of organizing themselves without direction from the manager. We have former captains all over the shop. They are not callow kids.

Take them on a bondage session to somewhere like Dometria's Dungeon in Brighton or the Nut Cracker Suite in Noo Yoik and nail their schlongs to a block of wood and plug them into the mains until they light up like pinball machines.

We need a like button on this site

[MarkM]

This reminds me of the frog in the boiling water thing.

Drop a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out, put it into cold water and then gradually heat it up it will happily boil to death.

If Bruce was managing another club and had the record he has with us, would you want him as our manager?

Just because he is here and his decline in results has been gradual over a few months, does not make him the best option to take us forward.

[brian green]

Most of our frogs have jumped out.

[manic-road]

Most of our frogs have jumped out.

That made me chuckle.

[peter w]

Well the long and short of it is that if we lose against Derby then Bruce is on very thin ice. 3 points really is needed. Win that and then only get 1 win out of rotherham and Bristol City and 6 points is still enough to keep him in a job and us away from the drop zone. Draw against Derby, and then he is one game from the sack. He needs 3 points on saturday and I think he's well aware of it.

[Dave]

Drop a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out

Isn't it more likely to pretty much die on impact?

[AVH87]

Depends on the next 2 games whether he stays for me, they arrive within 4 days of each other so I'd give him both.

He has to win at least 1 of them, ideally he needs to get us 4-6 points which could be the start of us getting back on track.

[Ads]

We need confidence to start showing the quality we have. Man for man we have better players than most, but we've yet to gel into a cohesive unit and we've become incredibly brittle.

To be the better side and comfortable for 40 minutes to then mentally collapse was poor but a hallmark of our absence of belief. The next three games pit us against sides equally low on confidence with inferior players. It's an opportunity we must grasp with both hands, feet, elbows, doesn't matter.

[N'ZMAV]

Sacking Bruce now couldn't make it any worse.

[wince]

Team low on confidence? Not scored for a while? Bringing back a fringer or starting a kid and need a lift? If you can play us you need THE AV-TEAM. I love it when a plan comes together......we can already see script for next few games