Bruce Sacked at last (now official)

[Matt Collins]

He needs to look at a 4-4-2 for Saturday, with Davis supported by a second striker.
He needs to pick a bench that gives him options.
He needs to have his team presenting the opposition with challenges rather than sitting back and being surprised by the oppo's approach.

It's times like this when the 'real' manager emerges. Currently we're seeing defensiveness in team selection and hearing about injuries: that does not fill me with confidence.

Disagree on 442

We played 442 with hogan at home to Wednesday. It’s the only home league match we’ve lost all season

I never think we look right playing it

[Mister E]

He needs to look at a 4-4-2 for Saturday, with Davis supported by a second striker.
He needs to pick a bench that gives him options.
He needs to have his team presenting the opposition with challenges rather than sitting back and being surprised by the oppo's approach.

It's times like this when the 'real' manager emerges. Currently we're seeing defensiveness in team selection and hearing about injuries: that does not fill me with confidence.

Disagree on 442

We played 442 with hogan at home to Wednesday. It’s the only home league match we’ve lost all season

I never think we look right playing it

4-4-2 works with an offensive mindset, decent fullbacks and athletic and positionally-aware midfielders. Maybe I'm asking too much ...

[Matt Collins]

I’d still say that many on this site were predicting a mid table finish, when we assumed we’d have Kodjia, grealish Jedinak available all season plus fewer injuries

I think we just need to reserve judgment until the end of the season

[Clampy]

I’d still say that many on this site were predicting a mid table finish, when we assumed we’d have Kodjia, grealish Jedinak available all season plus fewer injuries

I think we just need to reserve judgment until the end of the season

I think we just need to stop panicking whenever we drop points. We're not going to win every game.

[john e]

the season is a about gathering points, the 7 winning run or the no winning run mean not a lot its all about how many points you end up with

we have the amount of points that puts us in the top 6 very close to 5 other teams, that's where we are and one of those teams will make it to second spot and we have as good a chance as anyone else of doing that

its a race to finish in the top 2 now,
it doesn't really matter if you finish 3rd or 6th after that, its the play off lottery that awaits and we will definitely make that

imo none of the other 5 teams are all that good including us, so even if we arn't very good neither is anyone else around us
so its all to play for

[Reuben]

He's trending on Twitter right now due to an interview in The Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/steve-bruce-ive-lost-dad-mams-fighting-for-her-life-i-feel-powerless-0770hk6p3

Anyone with paywall access care to transcribe for a cheapskate?

[cdbearsfan]

Could someone copy and paste it, please?

[Reuben]

From The Times (link above)

Steve Bruce: I’ve lost Dad. Mam’s fighting for her life. I feel powerless

Steve Bruce’s arms are aloft. Aston Villa have just scored and as their manager turns towards the camera, he is living in the now, fuelled by adrenaline, his smile joyous, fists pumping. Then his chin collapses to his chest and as he claps his hands, it hits him again, the weight of mourning, those hours on the motorway, “the horrible pain in the stomach that grief gives you”. His face is creasing. Tears are coming.

When he thinks back to those few seconds this month, in the midst of Villa’s 2-0 victory over Birmingham City, his former club, Bruce struggles to peer through the mist. Joe, his father, had died that week. “I don’t know what I was doing or what happened,” he says.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have celebrated, but I was lost in the moment. All the emotion was bubbling out.”

The feeling was too raw, but Bruce needed to be there. “Even though I’d lost my dad, I had to be at that game,” he says. “He would have wanted me there. He would have said, ‘Just do your job, son. No fuss.’ That was him, exactly what he was like, the type who quietly got on with things.” So Bruce did the same, or tried to, a football man to his core, doing his suffering in public.

There is no disguising it; Bruce is reeling. In the days before his father’s passing, Sheenagh, his mother — who had been caring for Joe — was taken to hospital in Newcastle with a serious illness. She is still there. “It’s heartbreaking,” Bruce says, “and it’s been the cruellest three weeks. My mam was so independent and fit. She’d get the Metro into town, go shopping, or out to Whitley Bay.”

Bruce’s existence has shifted, mentally and physically. Three days a week, from his home in Cheshire, he drives to Tyneside to visit Sheenagh. It is draining. “The problem is that Newcastle is not on my doorstep, but if that’s what it is, then that’s what it’ll be,” he says. “It takes seven or eight hours [round trip], but so what? It’s what anybody would do. And when I think about the sacrifices my parents made . . .

“Do you know something? We’re all guilty of it, especially in this business: we think we’re invincible. You go through life thinking, ‘It’ll never happen to me’. But something like this can happen to anyone. You get to a certain age and you have to evaluate things and I know I’m not invincible. I’ve lost my dad and my mam’s fighting for her life and there’s nothing I can do. I’m powerless.”

He found out about Sheenagh before Villa’s match away to Sheffield United on January 30. “Because of the severity of what happened to her, I was in a place where I couldn’t concentrate on anything,” he says. “That was the worst night. It took all of my experience just to be involved. That’s where you need a staff, the support of your family and friends. Villa have been very understanding.”

Decades of old threads have been unpicked. “I always spoke to my dad before games,” Bruce says. “I’d ring him on a Friday and he’d ask, ‘Who have you got tomorrow?’ I’d tell him and we’d have a chat. He wasn’t one of those dads who followed my every move. My mam was the real driving force when I was a kid. She took me on the bus everywhere, you know. My dad had to work to make ends meet.

“He was the quiet one. Real northeast. If you got a, ‘Well done,’ you’d be happy. Mam would have shouted from the rooftops, but it was that steely thing with him. In the end, it was over a Glenmorangie or a pint and he’d say, ‘Yeah, you’ve done OK, son.’ And I’d reply, ‘That’s kind of you, Dad, thank you.’ He never wanted the limelight, never wanted to be seen as a footballer’s dad. He never played that card once.

“He would come and watch me play for Manchester United every couple of months when the big games were on, for cup finals, but I suppose one of his biggest strengths was being able to say, ‘Go out and enjoy your life — you don’t want me hanging on your coat-tails.’ He wasn’t that sort of man. And I think it’s fair to say he didn’t enjoy me being a manager one little bit.

“Towards the end, he was asking me, ‘Have you not had enough yet?’ He still had that protective side. It was his way of saying, ‘What are you doing, Steve? Are you mad?’ We all ask that question of ourselves sometimes. The job has so many highs, but it can be so isolated too. I’d tell my dad, ‘If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be involved, I promise.’ ”

Bruce grew up in a family of Newcastle United supporters. Joe took Steve to his first match at St James’ Park in 1969. “He worked at the Parsons factory [the northeast engineering firm], on the same machine for more than 30 years until he retired at 62,” Bruce says. “He was like a lot of working-class fathers. Went to work, enjoyed a few beers at the club at the weekend. He was satisfied with that.”

When Bruce became Sunderland manager in 2009, Joe wrestled with it, pleased to have his son home, pained by him straddling the Tyne-Wear rivalry and what it might entail. “He only came to one Sunderland game and that was my first one at home, when we lost to Chelsea,” Bruce says. “Afterwards, he said, ‘I can’t deal with that, Steve.’ He never felt that football was the be all and end all, and he didn’t like the prospect of his son being slated. I’d be the same with Alex, my son.

“My mam was different. I got her a box at Sunderland and she came for every game with a couple of pals and enjoyed it, until that horrible day against Wigan, when she turned around and said to me, ‘Son, I don’t think I’m going to bother coming next week.’ And I said, ‘Mam, I don’t think I’ll be here next week!’ We were both right. Neither of us went back. But maybe Sunderland people look back now and think, ‘The old bugger didn’t do such a bad job.’ I hope so.”

Bruce led Sunderland to tenth, their highest finish during their decade in the Premier League. He secured two promotions with Birmingham and did the same at Hull City (coupled with an FA Cup final and European football), leaving them when they returned to the top division in 2016, concerned at the club’s direction. When he took the Villa role that October, becoming their fourth manager in a year, the club were 19th in the Sky Bet Championship. They are now third.

In a strange, poignant way, Bruce’s “worst” night was also the best. Villa were victorious against Sheffield United, scoring a late winner through Robert Snodgrass. “Everyone is euphoric when you get a last-minute goal, but there was a connection between the supporters and the team,” he says. “They associate with them again. That was the first time I really felt that.”

As with many of his colleagues, the game has always been “a drug” for Bruce, 57, but now it is a “release” too. “It helps,” he says. A situation such as his would always be distressing, but it has come just as he brought an untethered club under control, his team beaten just once in nine league games. He has laboured under a tight budget that will become tighter if Villa are not promoted, but he has restored order.

“We’ve done OK,” he says. “We can’t get carried away. We’ve given ourselves an outstanding chance, which was the remit at the start, but there are two clubs in Sunderland and Hull, both of whom I’ve managed, newly relegated from the Premier League and in danger of dropping down again. That was my fear here and it was a real fear. We’d overspent. There was an horrendous wage bill.

“I’d walked away from a Premier League job, but once Villa knocked on my door, it was a no-brainer: great name, great club, great stadium, great fanbase. It’s a huge privilege to be here but a big challenge. The most important thing was to get stabilised. After a horrible few years, the whole club was just so used to getting beat. There was an acceptance of it.”

Bruce has made a profit in his transfer dealings, but in the summer brought in John Terry on a free transfer and Glenn Whelan for £1 million from Stoke City.

“Somebody like Jack Grealish will look at John at 37 and think ‘Wow, is that what I’ve got to do to get to the top?’ ” Bruce says. “OK, we haven’t got a lot of money, but I needed leaders, that influence in the dressing room, really good old pros.”

Then came a wobble; after finishing 13th in May, Villa took seven points from as many matches at the start of this season. “It was tough,” Bruce says, “and there was an element saying, ‘Off with his head.’ Thankfully, there was common sense above me. Ultimately there’s only one club that changes managers all the time and has success and that’s Chelsea. And they’re on a different level to every bugger else.”

Villa are starting to feel like Villa again. “Slowly but surely, we’ve turned it around,” Bruce says. “We haven’t achieved anything, but at least we’ve changed the culture.

“We’ve seen it with other big clubs, just because you’re Aston Villa it doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t do things right, if you don’t invest right, you come unstuck.”

It can be a fickle, fragile game, but it is a delicate world, too. More than most, Bruce understands that.

Going up would be a “fitting” way to honour his dad, to please his mother, although Joe would recoil from it.

“He’d say, ‘Howay son, that’s a bit much,’ ” Bruce says. “But he’d want me to be successful. So I’ll do the best I can. Of course, I could do without this — oh God, how I wish to be without it — but I’ll face it head on.”

It is Bruce’s way; resilient, determined, optimistic, a good manager and a decent man, whether he is ploughing up the A1 or fidgeting in the dugout. He will carry on.

“There are times when we all have to suffer grief, but obviously my job is public, so everybody knows,” he says.

“That horrible pain in the stomach that grief gives you is there. It’s always there. But my mam and dad would want me to get on with it. There’s no alternative, is there?”

[Chico Hamilton III]

The more I understand about the human side of him, the more I like Bruce as a person

[Big Dick Edwards]

Individuals may not agree with team selections and tactics from time to time but Steve Bruce is a proven, successful and reliable manager at this level, exactly what we needed when he was appointed, and a very decent human being. I hope for his sake as much as ours that we get promoted this season.

[Chris Jameson]

The more I understand about the human side of him, the more I like Bruce as a person

He's always struck me as a decent man, must be really tough for him at the moment.

[cdbearsfan]

Thanks for the copy and paste, Reuben. A moving article. Let's hope the players can give him a bit of cheer tomorrow and that his mum recovers and is allowed out of hospital.

[SO Villa]

There's a few things footballing things that I don't necessarily agree with in that but they're probably not important in the grand scheme of things.

It's a lovely interview and confirms what I always thought about Bruce, that he's a decent and genuine man.

[dave.woodhall]

The same writer has a longer piece on the Villa in tomorrow's paper.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

An excellent piece so sensitively written. I can't imagine the pain he must be going through right now. Those journeys up north must be both emotionally and physically draining. Bruce, whatever you think of his football, is a very decent man and I can only wish him the best.