Villa Park Redevelopment

[Dante Lavelli]

He did alright. He steadied the ship. But ran out of ideas and stayed too long.

And he bought John McGinn.

The ship analogy is spot on. He got us racing the right direction, avoided the rocks and stormiest seas, but he was slightly off course. The longer he stayed the further away from the target destination we would have been.

[PeterWithesShin]

We were the Titanic when he took over, we were the Exxon Valdez when he left.

[Mellin]

Haha, yeah.

It's worth remembering what Bruce inherited. We weren't a good Championship side. We were a fucking terrible Championship side, with a dressing room comparable to the Furher's bunker. He changed us from that to a team who made the playoff final. Turned sour in the end, but the platform was in for Smith to come in and take us up that season. It's not too far removed from reality that without Steve Bruce we end up in League One.

[Sexual Ealing]

This drives me mad. Anything Bruce did was so fucking obvious that Steve Bruce could have done it. He didn’t come with a magic secret. He made the players feel good about themselves and recognised that even that group ought to be nearer the top than the bottom so he got them to bore their way there. He was an upper mid-table Championship manager, and that’s where he took us.

[AV82EC]

Steve Bruce definitely steadied the ship, bought in some good people who raised standards and made some shrewd purchases. What he wasn’t able to do was galvanise that in to something that you felt would storm the Championship, he wasn’t a good enough Manager to do that. Bearing in mind he lost both his parents at that time I’d suggest he did as well as he could in the circumstances but we needed someone who recognised that being there or thereabouts wasn’t good enough. He created a platform for others to take it where it needed to go which when you think about it is a good thing.

[Richard E]

We weren’t remotely in danger of ending up in League One.

[PeterWithesShin]

When Bruce came in we'd won 1 of 11 league games that season, had won 4 of our previous 51 league games, hadn't won away for over a year and were at the arse end the second tier. We were in absolute freefall.

[Mellin]

Di Matteo's win rate was 8% or something daft. Extrapolate that over a season and you're going down.

[bill]

Can we get back on topic please.

[Sexual Ealing]

WE ARE ON TOPIC STEVE BEUCE IS SHIT

[The Edge]

WE ARE ON TOPIC STEVE BEUCE IS SHIT

But he did teach us to "put on wor boots and roll up wor sleeves"

[pauliewalnuts]

Remember how eyeball-bleedingly shit the football was to watch?

It was absolutely as bad as McLeish days, utter garbage. Bruce - like McLeish - both came across as decent types, but their idea of 'tactics' was to slap the lads on the back and egg them on as they ran out, then hope for the best.

[Monty]

Bruce stabilised us, gave us a bit of direction back, and will always be the guy who signed McGinn, but we weren't getting to where we've got with him in charge one more day.

[cdbearsfan]

WE ARE ON TOPIC STEVE BEUCE IS SHIT

No. He was okay. Helped stabilise the club and signed McGinn. Wasn't good enough for where we needed to go. Seems a nice bloke.

[VILLA MOLE]

so off potato head for a minute,  is the Trinity capacity increasing next season ?