Bruce Sacked at last (now official)

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I don't think we play long ball, as that implies a deliberate tactic. My biggest criticism would be that until that first goal goes in or after a bright start, we look devoid of a method of attack, long ball or otherwise.

I don't disagree with that. Surely that's worse than deploying an attacking tactic (any attacking tactic)?!

I agree with Ads point too. It's frustrated me for most of the season as I've sat there watching and wondering, game after game, what the hell the plan for attack is.

[Ad@m]

We are basically a stand and watch team and the 2 that do not receive the pass feel as though it is not worth the effort to make the runs (that's how it seems to me, anyway) if they are not going to receive the ball.

Spot on and it annoys the hell out of me.  This dates back to the McLeish days, with our midfield being more than willing to hide rather than show for the ball and we've never managed to fix it.  Karim El Ahmadi was the absolute king at this, the fastest I ever saw him move was everytime we won the ball as he sprinted to stand behind the nearest opposition player.

There's a general attitude/expectation/hope that once one of our players has passed the ball to a team mate, said team mate is going to do something miraculous and no further support is needed.  It's insane.  What do they do at Bodymoor?!

It really isn't rocket science, and at this level the few times we have done a bit of pass and move we've torn teams apart.

[Villa in Denmark]

I don't think we play long ball, as that implies a deliberate tactic. My biggest criticism would be that until that first goal goes in or after a bright start, we look devoid of a method of attack, long ball or otherwise.

For a variety of reasons I haven't seen too much of us recently, but my abiding impression has been that "kick and rush" was overselling it at times.

[KevinGage]

There have been plenty of occasions when we have just boofed it in Kodjia's general direction, with little thought or awareness that -seeing as he ain't a targetman- the ball might not stick.

[brontebilly]

Movement of the ball requires a few things - someone who can move into space to receive the ball, and we need someone who can pass the ball further than 2 yards ( I don't see many of those type of footballers down the Villa, or if in truth in the Chumpionship!)

Lets be honest the football is dreadful even the team that are starting to move away at the top of the table are not very good.

Not sure we will be able to play that way with Jedinak in the DM role.  To play that kind of game, we need someone in that role who can get on the ball and pick out passes. Jedinak has other strengths, but that is not one of them. 

Jedinak is getting a bum rap on here at the moment. His has good passing abilities - I think - but is involved in a scrap most of the time meaning that time on the ball is a nanosecond in this league.

I don't think he has an ounce of footballing ability to be honest. It becomes abundantly clear if we go behind that he needs replacing as he offers nothing constructive, other qualities but to be honest I was expecting a lot more from him. His legs look gone in truth.

I'd love to see stats in this division about the team scoring first going on to win. Newcastle's win at Brighton I think was their first win coming from behind.

A lot of our games under Bruce have been horrendous to watch but Leeds away for example, the first goal was crucial in a scrappy game. Even at Newcastle we were on top until conceding.

[Toronto Villa]

A lot of people moaned about the performance at Rotherham.  If we were top of the league you can bet that most of them would have called it a professional performance - turn up,  three points,  job done.

It was irritating to watch as we just couldn't string a few passes together, but that said we could have easily have been a few up at half time.

we appear to be nervous or just not comfortable until we score. Then it appears we play with a lot more freedom and expose the space when teams come on to us. We obviously need to start games better and impose ourselves earlier. However, I am encouraged by the second half displays where we have recently found a way to score the first goal and win games. Bit by bit as they say...

[ChicagoLion]

I guess the point is that Bruce was bought in to get us a lot closer to the top of the league.
So his shit version of football is ev en more exposed because in the long run we know it will not be good enough.

[mr underhill]

alternatively we could go on to win the next three and then shit or not, we wouldn't worry to much

[Dave]

There have been plenty of occasions when we have just boofed it in Kodjia's general direction, with little thought or awareness that -seeing as he ain't a targetman- the ball might not stick.

For most of the second half at Newcastle we were just boofing it in Hogan's general direction and it was rarely ending up in the same postcode.

[Clampy]

I think the one important thing this season was to actually start getting used to winning football matches again. Maybe some of the quality of the football at times has taken a back seat but hopefully with confidence that will return.

[Risso]

I think the one important thing this season was to actually start getting used to winning football matches again. Maybe some of the quality of the football at times as taken a back seat but hopefully with confidence that will return.

We need to end the season on a high, even if we do miss out on the play offs.  Three wins is very welcome, but having beaten three teams in shit form and two of whom are in the bottom four, we now need to prove that we can beat the likes of the top 6.  We need to keep this run going, but also see a sustained period of much better football.

[N'ZMAV]

If people are expecting a modern type of passing, high tempo, pressing attacking football from Bruce and his team then they are mistaken.

[paul_e]

If people are expecting a modern type of passing, high tempo, pressing attacking football from Bruce and his team then they are mistaken.

This is the thing for me when people say that the performances will get better with confidence, I'm just not sure that's true.  The last couple of months we've looked like what I'd expect from a Bruce team, but with more defensive errors.  I trust him to fix the latter and doing that will probably be enough to get us into the top 6 next season but I don't think we'll get much better to watch.  I don't think anyone disagrees that their is an upper limit to how far this style can take us, my concern is that every season that ceiling gets lower and building a side to play this way is just shifting our problems 2 years down the road.  When Houllier came in we saw difficulty in making that transition and I can't help but feel that we're setting ourselves up for the same problems.

[john e]

I think the one important thing this season was to actually start getting used to winning football matches again. Maybe some of the quality of the football at times has taken a back seat but hopefully with confidence that will return.

unfortunately because the manager has been such a rouring failure you know the 'promotion specialist' the season became a write off from mid Jan onwards,

 you might be happy with a few wins in this league but I was hoping for a quick return with the new owner and investment, or at the very least be in contention for a play off place which was not out of the question if we had a manager who was up to the job

Bruce has very quickly managed to wreck this season and will do the same next season if the board and Xia allow him to

I keep on saying this but we need to raise the bar,
 we can do a lot better than this ,
I cant be doing with this attitude of lets be grateful for a few wins against other rubbish sides,
we should be in the top 8 at least with the squad we have, anything less is abject failure

[PeterWithesShin]

RDM fucked the season up as it left us no wiggle room to have another bad run. And it's why i've said before that for me, Bruce has to prove he can get us winning consistently this season to be given next season. It's why I don't get this "give him pre-season and 10 games next season" as after 10 games you can be all but out the promotion race as we saw this season.