Bruce Sacked at last (now official)

[mr underhill]

Dean Smith's going to need balls the size of Uranus to survive the Villa Park jungle.

[andyh]

Steve Bruce has been in charge of Aston Villa 719 days. He has spent just 6 days in the top 2

‘Championship Expert’ 🙄

[aj2k77]

3rd richest owners in the football league. Hugely successful Business men, a background in sports, cherry pick a Brentford manager who's highest finish is 9th. Doesn't sound right to me.

[aj2k77]

Steve Bruce has been in charge of Aston Villa 719 days. He has spent just 6 days in the top 2

‘Championship Expert’ 🙄

When he took over 10 months ago though we'd just sold most of our squad and were cut adrift at the bottom of the division. With a collection of waifs and strays expertly drilled by him though, against all odds, and the financial muscle of the likes of Preston, Burton, Brenford and Ipswich we somehow made the play off final before heriocally bowing out 0-1 barely having a shot on target. We're not one of the biggest clubs in this division, we are here to make up the numbers and it was a fantastic achievement.

[Villafirst]

Brian Little is Advisor to the Board. You simply don't hear from him? Surely he should be advising the Board to fire Bruce??

[mr underhill]

I honestly think the job would subsume Dean, but  if he's the man, we all need to get behind him from day one. Play offs are the minimum expectation even now.

[andyh]

With this set of players and the right manager, we could still finish top.

[SoccerHQ]

Big thing for me is West Brom are top despite only keeping one clean sheet all season.

Our defence is rubbish and always likely to concede so surely we have to counter that by regularly scoring 2-3 a game like the league leaders are doing?

That's a big problem for me with SB, his defensive mentality. We're poor in defence yet he produces negative formations and tactics that brings more pressure on our back 4 by sitting back and so the likes of Grealish and Abraham are isolated in the final third.

Given all the attacking players we've him in his time here it's a bit of a scandal how far goals we've scored on average in last two years especially away from home.

One simple thing the next manager needs to do is get us on the front foot much more during the 90 minutes. We have the attacking players to do that and so hide the weaknesses in defence.

[Ads]

Brian Little is Advisor to the Board. You simply don't hear from him? Surely he should be advising the Board to fire Bruce??

How do you know he's not?

[Ads]

I am really unconvinced that Smith is suitable for us.

[eddiemunster]

Steve Bruce has been in charge of Aston Villa 719 days. He has spent just 6 days in the top 2

‘Championship Expert’ 🙄

When he took over 10 months ago though we'd just sold most of our squad and were cut adrift at the bottom of the division. With a collection of waifs and strays expertly drilled by him though, against all odds, and the financial muscle of the likes of Preston, Burton, Brenford and Ipswich we somehow made the play off final before heriocally bowing out 0-1 barely having a shot on target. We're not one of the biggest clubs in this division, we are here to make up the numbers and it was a fantastic achievement.

Mate, I sincerely hope this was sarcasm, cos if it ain't and you believe what you wrote, then you are just as delusional as Potato Face.

[Legion]

Reads sarcastically to me.

[robleflaneur]

3rd richest owners in the football league. Hugely successful Business men, a background in sports, cherry pick a Brentford manager who's highest finish is 9th. Doesn't sound right to me.

Brentford's average attendance,the second lowest in the division,is a third of ours.
They are above us in the table and finished above us in 2016-17.Smith,I believe,uses a free midfielder as an outball or target man.That would be tailor made for Grealish.
Smith's record at Walsall was even better.
He may not be the best candidate but the season is underway and persuading managers to move is that more difficult,a consequence of the folly of giving Bruce more time.
Normally,I am against short termism but what is the value of someone who could get us up this year ,especially with the consequences of FFP if we don't ?
The answer is not Bruce.

[kippaxvilla2]

Smith would probably go like the rest of our great hopes over the years. All excited we will be about this great free flowing football we will be served up.  Only for within weeks of our first few batterings, he takes on the mantel of a vagrant, unwashed and unshaven and asking for more time as he’s still working on a formula. 

[curiousorange]

I don't think Dean Smith is the answer. A lot of people going on about how well he does on limited resources. Well, we don't have limited resources. We have a lot of choices and a huge load of expectation and that's an entirely different challenge.