The sack race

[bluej]

I sense you are trying to be funny, sadly trying [highlight]it[/highlight]as close as you're getting.

A GRAMMATICAL ERROR!

My life as I know it is over.

[Blue Since 76]

He's more of a big fat shit, surely ?

It's strange that none of the ex rags has done anything spectacular as a manager yet. You would have thought that they would have gained some magic from Gandalf himself. Solskjaer seems to be the one who has made the best flying start to a career although Hughes did well with Wales. Bruce has just bumbled from one place to the next.

All the ones who've tried were the stereotypical manager ones who were really self seven as players - can't bring myself to name them but you know who they are. Suspect they all got on with it with perhaps the occasional rocket if they were having a bad game

I can't imagine some of the more elegant players just got rockets. They'd have had the arm round the shoulder 'you're brilliant' type speech. If those players have never seen that I suspect there could be something missing in their man management and motivational techniques.

Funny to watch, anyway

[Dunnylad]

Well after tonight's results does avb make a late dash for the hatchet or has losing to Cardiff sealed it for kean? Never seen a manager last so long when he's lost the fans as badly as Kean had

[freshie]

Well after tonight's results does avb make a late dash for the hatchet or has losing to Cardiff sealed it for kean? Never seen a manager last so long when he's lost the fans as badly as Kean had

I think AVB's odds to be sacked will have shortened significantly after tonight's debacle

[Beefymcfc]

Can we have 2 sackings in one day? Leave AVB (QPRST) there for a while, we've got them soon!

[Slim]

Kean has come out with "League is our focus".

Didn't buy it when Bobby came out with that line of crap after Napoli, not buying it now.

[Beefymcfc]

Kean has come out with "League is our focus".

Didn't buy it when Bobby came out with that line of crap after Napoli, not buying it now.

Blackburn manager Steve Kean says the club 'forfeited' their Carling Cup quarter-final at Cardiff because of a crucial run of Premier League games ahead of them.

16 Sunderland 13 1 3 3 10 9 1 2 3 5 6 0 11
17 Wolverhampton 13 2 1 3 8 10 1 1 5 5 13 -10 11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18 Bolton 13 1 0 6 9 19 2 0 4 10 12 -12 9
19 Wigan 13 1 2 3 8 11 1 1 5 4 13 -12 9
20 Blackburn 13 1 0 5 6 13 0 4 3 11 17 -13 7

Just over half a point a game, how does this man get away with it?

[Alex Sapphire]

Kean has come out with "League is our focus".

Didn't buy it when Bobby came out with that line of crap after Napoli, not buying it now.

Blackburn manager Steve Kean says the club 'forfeited' their Carling Cup quarter-final at Cardiff because of a crucial run of Premier League games ahead of them.

16 Sunderland 13 1 3 3 10 9 1 2 3 5 6 0 11
17 Wolverhampton 13 2 1 3 8 10 1 1 5 5 13 -10 11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18 Bolton 13 1 0 6 9 19 2 0 4 10 12 -12 9
19 Wigan 13 1 2 3 8 11 1 1 5 4 13 -12 9
20 Blackburn 13 1 0 5 6 13 0 4 3 11 17 -13 7

Just over half a point a game, how does this man get away with it?

Hughes IN

[CityGer]

Bruce it is!

[ant london]

Fuck off Elephant Man.....delighted with that. Up there with every time Big Fat Sam gets the chop

Taggart sucking prick

Good article on him here.....waaaaaaah!

Steve Bruce was a manager who refused to move with the times
The former Sunderland No1 paid little attention to modern coaching methods, technology or tactics – and now he looks like man whose era has passed

Louise Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 November 2011 21.08 GMT

Steve Bruce has been sacked after two and half years with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA
Shortly after taking charge at Sunderland Steve Bruce was asked if he had considered experimenting with a Christmas Tree formation. "I'm not really into tactics," he replied. At the time that response was easy to interpret as a deliberately flippant or, perhaps, a self-deprecating means of avoiding answering the question. As the seasons passed, though, the suspicion grew that the former Manchester United captain had simply been honest.

Arguably one of the principal reasons Bruce is no longer in charge at the Stadium of Light concerns his apparent inability to tweak formations or tactics during matches. Whenever a rival manager re-configured his system mid-game, Bruce invariably failed to come up with a countermeasure.

In recent months Alan Pardew, Mark Hughes, Roy Hodgson and, most recently, Roberto Martínez have all seemingly out-thought him as Sunderland dropped points against supposedly weaker sidesthey really should have beaten.

If he failed to cut it as a tactician, the 50-year-old did not seem much of a strategist either. Including loans, 30 players were signed – several of whom have subsequently been moved on – during Bruce's two-and-a-half years on Wearside. That represents an unsettling "churn" factor and hardly proved conducive to developing either a clear playing philosophy or strong team spirit.

Always rather amorphous, if not downright scrappy, Sunderland's high-tempo style lacked creativity, not to mention control, in central midfield. Unable to dictate play, the team frequently failed to press home early advantages.

In many ways Bruce's decision to make the hot-headed, yellow card-prone Lee Cattermole his captain proved emblematic of a rather gung-ho reign during which players such as David Meyler were rushed back from serious injuries only to suffer further complications, the idea of hiring a sports psychologist was dismissed and the manager boasted about his inability to send an email. While Bruce – who did finally learn how to log on last summer when the club issued him with an iPad – may well argue this lack of computer literacy was hardly relevant, many of his peers spend countless hours checking out the latest sports science innovations, researching transfer targets and analysing Prozone statistics on their increasingly indispensable laptops.

Unashamedly old school, Bruce believed that motivation was the key to management but the influx of overseas coaches has raised the Premier League's technical bar and despite his relative youth, he has begun to look suspiciously like a man whose era has passed.

Unlike many modern managers he did not coach the team himself, delegating that job to his assistant, Eric Black. While Bruce's undoubtedly engaging, humour-suffused, personality had a broad appeal, he fell out with quite a few players, most notably Kenwyne Jones, now at Stoke, and Anton Ferdinand, now at QPR and who had by common consensus finally emerged as Sunderland's outstanding defender when he was sold in August.

Shortly afterwards Sunderland's manager was badly let down by Titus Bramble, who faces a crown court trial on sexual assault charges in January. Other bad buys included Matthew Kilgallon, Christian Riveros, Marcos Angeleri and Paulo Da Silva. Meanwhile Craig Gardner, bought from Birmingham for £6m, has barely figured in the first team.

There were some good purchases along the way, too, such as Lorik Cana, Asamoah Gyan and, above all, Darren Bent . Unfortunately Bent had become desperate to leave Sunderland six months before his eventual move to Aston Villa in January. Cana headed to Turkey after just a year while Gyan has newly gone to United Arab Emirates on loan. Money evidently played a big part in all these deals, but it does not represent the entire behind-the-scenes story.

Something was clearly wrong because, as last season's promising beginning subsided into a post-new year collapse, managerial excuses increasingly became a recurring, if self-destructive, theme.

It certainly did not play well with Sunderland fans when the crowd were blamed for harbouring overly "great expectations" or that Bruce constantly bemoaned the difficulty of attracting players to the north-east. More recently, his loudest lament has been that locals would not accept him purely because he had been born north of the Tyne and grew up supporting Newcastle United.

Granted, a minority shamefully hurled chants of "You fat Geordie bastard – get out of our club" after Saturday's defeat to Wigan, but the overwhelming majority of supporters did not care about his roots. Moreover their "expectations" were mostly pretty modest.

Two home wins since New Year's Day have tried Wearsiders' patience but, contrary to Bruce's theories, many would have taken the odd defeat to Newcastle in their stride had there been signs of progress or a discernible playing pattern emerging. Maybe the core problem was that Bruce never accepted that, sometimes, the devil really is in the detail. Soon after Ahmed Elmohamady arrived from Egypt, Sunderland's manager was asked if the winger would be observing Ramadan and if so, how the daylight fasting might affect his game.

The question was met with a blank look. "Is Elmohamady a Coptic Christian rather than a Muslim then?" the questioner persisted. It was an important distinction and the answer should have tripped off Bruce's tongue, but he clearly did not have a clue.

Counted out

2: Points clear of the relegation zone, in 16th, having won only two of 13 league games this season

10: Sunderland's position last season. The club finished 13th in Steve Bruce's first full season in charge

28: Bruce's win percentage, less than Premier League figure with Wigan Athletic and Birmingham City

30: Number of players Bruce signed since joining in March 2009, several of whom have left

15: Red cards received during Bruce's reign, more than any other Premier League club in the same period

2: His second sacking. Bruce resigned at Sheffield Utd, Wigan (twice), Crystal Palace and Birmingham

[Ted Hughes]

Let's hope the disappointment of this doesn't lead him to start comfort eating.


This character will turn up on TV pontificating on one of CITY'S games in the near future. You can bet on it.

[patrickblue]

Let's hope the disappointment of this doesn't lead him to start comfort eating.

chortle

[steveo_88]

He'll be back sooner or later. People love to employ an ex rag if only to entice a few more through the gate.

[Yffi_88]

Him and hughes will basically swap places i reckon.

[Colin the King]

Wasn't Bruce touted as one of Britain's 'bright young managers' a few years ago? He's an utterly tactically inept rag buffoon that makes Hughes look like Galileo by comparison.

Hopefully he gets another Prem job somehow, otherwise we'll lose the chance to sing that delightful elephant man song twice a year.

[Slim]

Him and hughes will basically swap places i reckon.

So Leslie to Sunderland and Elephant Man to miss out on the Villa and Chelsea jobs and look like a fucking moron without a gig.

[Colin the King]

Him and hughes will basically swap places i reckon.

So Leslie to Sunderland and Elephant Man to miss out on the Villa and Chelsea jobs and look like a fucking moron without a gig.

Hahahaha!

[Yffi_88]

Him and hughes will basically swap places i reckon.

So Leslie to Sunderland and Elephant Man to miss out on the Villa and Chelsea jobs and look like a fucking moron without a gig.

Haha. Pretty much, yeah.

The Book of Shit will once again be passed on to another rag to spout reems and reems from it's pages until enough people forget what a cunt they are and hand them a managerial position. And so the rotation will continue.

[Ted Hughes]

Be it Hughes or ONeil, it's hard to imagine Sunderland won't be a much better team than that fat knobhead put out, so once again 'those' bastards have landed on their feet getting an easier 3 points than they would have done if they'd played them later. Every single thing has continued to run for them & they're still 5 points behind, out of the CC & struggling against fuck all in the Chump's Lg.

[Colin the King]

Be it Hughes or ONeil, it's hard to imagine Sunderland won't be a much better team than that fat knobhead put out, so once again 'those' bastards have landed on their feet getting an easier 3 points than they would have done if they'd played them later. Every single thing has continued to run for them & they're still 5 points behind, out of the CC & struggling against fuck all in the Chump's Lg.

And it's absolutely hilarious.