A break, a bit of a light news week and the media are dredging up more stories about Steve Bruce, with Martin O'Neill supposedly waiting in the wings...
To be honest I do not really see what all the fuss is about. OK, we have not had a great start, and are close to the bargain basement of the Premier League, with 1 win in 7 games. Bruce has attracted some top-class players to the club, and nobody can say he is not committed to the cause. He has taken criticism on the chin, defended himself, and to be fair a 10th place finish last season was the club’s 3rd highest finish since 1955.
There is a glass half-full sentiment around Wearside much of the time and this has come to the fore regarding Bruce. Having grown up in the area I know there is a feeling that it is easier to criticize and knock down than to praise and build up.
Obviously, we as fans expect the summer’s signings to perform, and for the team to rise up the table, but it will not happen overnight. And one can perhaps criticize Bruce for some of the handling of Darren Bent and Asamoah Gyan, how did things go bad in those two cases? But was it really his fault? Their undoubted success at Sunderland led to their being approached by other teams and becoming unsettled.
On the plus side I am being won over by a Niklas Bendtner, and Bruce again did well to attract him to the club in the face of the striker’s deteriorating relationship with Arsene Wenger. The Danish striker has blossomed with the belief Bruce has shown him, and his form in Denmark’s last two internationals has also been excellent, with 3 goals. This is marked contrast to experience of Anton Ferdinand and his reported utterings following his departure for QPR at the end of the transfer window.
Obviously all managers feel pressure at times, and any manager who sees his club in the bottom 6 for too long, especially after significant investment, is under special scrutiny and will feel some anxiety about their position, especially in the insecure world of football management. Luke Edwards, North-East football’s blogger at the Daily Telegraph has summarised the situation really succinctly - see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/lukeedwards/100020416/steve-bruce-is-under-pressure-whether-you-like-it-or-not/ - the club needs a good run of results.
No matter how the facts and opinions are lined up, we do clearly need to start putting some wins together and although it is tough ask, a win at the Emirates would be a great start, but it will be tough without Bendtner, who is on loan from Arsenal and ineligible..
A final snigger – I receive Jimmy Carr’s feed on Facebook – and I had to laugh at this one: 6th Oct 1854. The Great Fire of Newcastle. A wasted, ruined city, its people desperate and miserable. And then, they had a fire.
©Lars J.S. Knutsen
Comments
Posted by Ian_SAfc on 10/15/2011
Yes, I am one of those glass half-full people. I think Bruce did a good job last year despite the Bent saga and the freak injuries. I think that he couldn't have done much about Bent as those financial decisions may be out of his hands, but the Gyan debacle: he should have kept hold of him, even if it meant him sulking around for a few weeks.
He's a very good manager. True, tactically he's been outdone a few times, but generally I am happy with the new mentality he is bringing. As for Bendtner, his performances have been very good, but I think he lacks consistency to be a top, top striker. We still need some big name Bent-like player. If he can become consistant, then great, I am happy to be proved wrong. If not, we've got another Kenwyne Jones-type player with about the same goal return.
As I say, I hope I am wrong about him.
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Lars Knutsen was born in Sunderland of Norwegian parents across the Wear from the SSOL back when shipbuilding not car manufacture was the city’s main industry. His first game was in 1968 and he has followed the Black Cats since then, with great memories of the 1973 FA Cup. He hopes the “yo-yo” days are over and defines supporting a team by whether the result affects your mood (but maybe not in the way portrayed in the book “Fever Pitch”!) so has been cheerful recently. He endured school in Newc**tle, has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, a Professorship at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, and works in the Pharma industry as a consultant Medicinal Chemist.
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