Bruce Sacked at last (now official)

[sickbeggar]

Sounds plausible to me. The club don't have to sack Bruce or pay him off. Bruce gets a job and doesn't lose any face. Only far-fetched bit is Leeds wanting him.

Depends on perspective for some ( me ) I see him as failing at Villa given the resources however others ( like the local press) paint us almost getting there as a positive and that he is pretty much blameless .

So for Leeds they still see a Manager with 4 promotions and close to a 5th which for there recent history looks good on paper.

Not sure about that. If Leeds had spent a fortune trying to get promoted under a manager who was supposed to be a dead cert at it and had failed and now it looks like the club was having a fire sale because of it, would you want their manager here? Mebbe it depends if you've been taking any notice.

[tomd2103]

This is what's happening now some people are settling or content with championship.

I and many others though want progress and development if people are starting to be satisfied with championship life then that's both the lack of ambition villa as a club are demonstrating to fans as much as it is (and there prerogative) villa supporters view.

I don't think i've seen too many people on here say they're satisfied with the Championship. I've seen people say they've enjoyed the change from the money infested Premier League and I've seen some people say they've enjoyed winning games again but satisfied with staying down here? I doubt too many people want that.

I think the last week has been a sobering realisation for many of the cost of the club being in the Championship.

[sickbeggar]

The elephant in the room is what happens if we can't bring in premiership quality loans and we have to sell some of the better players because of this financial mess. if you don't like his style of football and the 3rd or more games he sets the team up not to lose, well what's gonna happen? Play the youngsters, and suddenly find a hitherto unknown passing style, or retreat further into worrying about the opposition? I know what i think he will do.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I like Bruce, he seems a very decent chap and he's got us being competitive again if nothing else. He has failed to get us up though so he can't really have any complaints if he is let go and to be honest, it may well be for the best. If they were to decide to stick with him (which I don't think they will) then he'll get my support again.

This is where I'm at as well

I'd agree if the outcome wasn't so predictable. In Bruce's defence, he's always hinted at 3 seasons to get the job done. The problem is we've never had a season when everything was stacked in our favour as last season and he failed to deliver to get us across the line. "There or there abouts"? Absolutely. Sadly, it was "there abouts".

He's gelled a squad together that pretty much we all love and he deserves massive praise for that. The only weakness has been the inconsistency, which is something extremely difficult to forgive, as the errors were there for everybody to see. He's right when he repeatedly says it's a tough division to get out of but he must accept that he was the man that held us back.

When you can't buy your way out of the Second Division, when you've got not only a great squad but a group of youngsters so talented, just waiting to be given just a few minutes to show their worth and ignored, when you know when you are promoted you'll need not only a massive rebuild but a complete change of plan, it's pretty obvious Bruce is not the man to take us forward.

We go on about stability but for me the only stability I'm concerned about is us holding our own back in our first season back in the Premier League. That has always been my vision and it's why I can't support Bruce as the Aston Villa manager. Like the game against Fulham, deep down, we were all looking for a miracle. Like we say over here, if you want a miracle, go to Fatima. If you want good football, appoint a good manager.

[ktvillan]

Entertainment wise, the games I went to I found to be some of the most boring I've ever witnessed.  Admittedly I managed to miss the high scoring home games but there weren't actually that many.   72 goals is only 1.56 per game, despite a few fours and a five.  It's hardly consistent liquid football.   We scored 0 or 1 in 27 games.  That's nearly 60% of them.  Again hardly a sign of a team consistently dominating games and scoring for fun.  Still if people are satisfied by less than one good game in four against usually mediocre to rancid oppositon that's their prerogative.  I'd prefer to see some movement and passing and a game played at a decent tempo, ad a team actually trying to win rather than waiting to see if the opposition are crap enough for us to maybe venture forward a bit.  Off with his 'Ead.

[Ads]

It's consistently more than all but two clubs.

[tomd2103]

Entertainment wise, the games I went to I found to be some of the most boring I've ever witnessed.  Admittedly I managed to miss the high scoring home games but there weren't actually that many.   72 goals is only 1.56 per game, despite a few fours and a five.  It's hardly consistent liquid football.   We scored 0 or 1 in 27 games.  That's nearly 60% of them.  Again hardly a sign of a team consistently dominating games and scoring for fun.  Still if people are satisfied by less than one good game in four against usually mediocre to rancid oppositon that's their prerogative.  I'd prefer to see some movement and passing and a game played at a decent tempo, ad a team actually trying to win rather than waiting to see if the opposition are crap enough for us to maybe venture forward a bit.  Off with his 'Ead.

Not so sure, as there were some pretty memorable games from New Year onwards (Bristol City, Blues, Wolves).  When you reflect on them though they were more to do with top class individual performances (mainly from Grealish) as opposed to an indentifiable style or pattern of play.  Too often the plan seemed to be to get the ball to Grealish and Snodgrass and hope they could produce something, and when the former in particular wasn’t on form we looked pretty average. 

[AsTallAsLions]

Entertainment wise, the games I went to I found to be some of the most boring I've ever witnessed.  Admittedly I managed to miss the high scoring home games but there weren't actually that many.   72 goals is only 1.56 per game, despite a few fours and a five.  It's hardly consistent liquid football.   We scored 0 or 1 in 27 games.  That's nearly 60% of them.  Again hardly a sign of a team consistently dominating games and scoring for fun.  Still if people are satisfied by less than one good game in four against usually mediocre to rancid oppositon that's their prerogative.  I'd prefer to see some movement and passing and a game played at a decent tempo, ad a team actually trying to win rather than waiting to see if the opposition are crap enough for us to maybe venture forward a bit.  Off with his 'Ead.

Not so sure, as there were some pretty memorable games from New Year onwards (Bristol City, Blues, Wolves).  When you reflect on them though they were more to do with top class individual performances (mainly from Grealish) as opposed to an indentifiable style or pattern of play.  Too often the plan seemed to be to get the ball to Grealish and Snodgrass and hope they could produce something, and when the former in particular wasn’t on form we looked pretty average. 

I'm with ktvillan. Bristol City and Wolves were the only times I witnessed us setting the league alight with our football, and honestly I am convinced that our players more or less flouted the dictated game plan on both occasions. Say what you will but we suddenly looked much more than a Bruce team in both... Before regressing back to the status quo almost immediately after.

[mr underhill]

He's still here then.

[oldhill_avfc]

So when we played well it was because the players flouted the game plan but when we were poor it was because Bruce set the team up wrong?

[Ads]

I'm with ktvillan. Bristol City and Wolves were the only times I witnessed us setting the league alight with our football, and honestly I am convinced that our players more or less flouted the dictated game plan on both occasions. Say what you will but we suddenly looked much more than a Bruce team in both... Before regressing back to the status quo almost immediately after.

I cannot believe you honestly think that. This attitude that positive things happened in spite of Bruce is odd. That we weren't more consistent is a fair argument, but we dismantled Bristol as they were wide open and Johnsone's own inexperience and hubris made them inexplicably wider still.

We pressed the life out of Wolves and ran them.off the park second half.

The Blues performance was the best. Men against boys for 90 minutes.

[old man villa fan]

It's consistently more than all but two clubs.

I think that says more about the lack of quality in the other clubs, which translated into inconsistency or not having squad depth to overcome injuries.

[footyskillz]

We had the better players than most teams
But under Bruce the sort of style, identity and some entertainment was lacking. I question if he wants to develop that.

[Brassneck]

We had the better players than most teams
But under Bruce the sort of style, identity and some entertainment was lacking. I question if he wants to develop that.

I feel a bit frustrated that given the quality of the players we had that Bruce didn't trust them more and allow them to attack more aggressively.  Unless we got the first goal in games, we rarely came away with 3 points.  It was little more than a numbers game.  Both Wolves and Fulham would go for 3 points from the off, as did Newcastle last season and it paid dividends for them.

[Ads]

We were passive in too many away games.