Steve Bruce.
He had one chance at redemption but he blew it, while others blow up his ego talking about what a great job he and his team did. No they didn’t.
Don’t like Steve Bruce, Steve Bruce the manager, wasn’t too bothered about him as a player, but really dislike Steve Bruce the manager.
He’s one of those typical English players who think, along with his media mates, that just because he played football the game owes him something. Owes him a living post his playing days, which either means manager or pundit.
Well his bloated, blood pressure induced coloured face and dullard Brit-manager speak should stop him being the latter but then as Tim Sherwood as popped up every time I turn on football covered by ITV it shows there is no barrel TV companies won’t scrape the bottom off for ex-players/managers to spout clichéd crap.
So it’s the former. The former where he’s stumped up at over the last 16 years at 7 different clubs in eight spells as manager.
Funny those different spells got me thinking about something he said earlier in the week, when the media were blowing smoke up his arse about getting Hull to a cup final, about how poor Tim was treated badly. How poor English managers are treated badly and not given a chance. Well maybe they’re not and maybe that’s down to the fact that most of them are the likes of Tim Sherwood and Steve Bruce.
Yet Bruce is always given a chance chairmen keep giving him a chance and what has he done? Walked out on a number of them and produced performances like this cup final for most of them.
Yes Bruce is always banging on about loyalty. Loyalty from players, loyalty from chairmen, loyalty to managers. Never loyalty from managers. Media kept banging on about how Sunderland must have been regretting letting him go. Why? Chances are he would have taken them down or walked out before doing so. He won less than a third of his games in charge there, 7% more than Di Canio and 10% less than Poyet.
Despite all the adulation Bruce presided over the second worst team in an awful F.A. Cup final.
Awful, awful game of football and not just because of the outcome. I did see one headline claiming it brought back the magic and romance of the Cup.
A one sided game where one team’s defensive inabilities were exposed twice early leading to nearly two hours of a flat back ten just humping balls up the park, away, anywhere, while the other side are clueless in how to combat it has no romance nor magic.
Steve Bruce though did have the biggest impact on the game, when he sent on McShane to replace his own son – the Kevin Bond to Steve Bruce’s John. McShane is the archetypal clogger that English managers of Bruce’s ilk love in the squad. As he came on we got all the usual platitudes, whole hearted, committed and such like. In other words he can’t play football but runs about and kicks those that do. He is an awful “player”, a blight on the game and as soon as he came on a reasonably solid flat back 10 became panicky every time they stupidly played him the ball.
And as the first instinct of nearly ever player in orange and black stripes was to pass the ball backwards, McShane saw far too much of the ball.
The scum whinged about Hull’s opener, they whinged about somewhere in the region of five penalties that could have been given. That all would have made the game somewhat bearable if they’d lost, crap but funny, but after the won it meant the game was just crap. I don’t suppose they whinged about falling over that won free-kicks and the first goal or the incorrectly given corner that led to the equaliser.
Steve Bruce you only had one job. Make your team hold onto a two goal lead. You failed.