The more I think about Bruce being stupid enough to come out saying we cannot afford to rotate I realise what a thick manager we have. I mean imagine being on the fringes of first team , knocking on his door pleading for your chance and then hearing him saying that on TV .. what makes it worse is how oblivious to it. The guy should be nowhere near a managers job at Greggs never mind a premier league football team. on another note it seems to me that rafa was criticised by people like keys for sighting the real issue at this club whereas Steve Bruce aka the king of spin blames everything other than it.
Surprised he didn't blame the nice weather on the south coast....it looked pretty hot. Danny Rose was pissing with sweat and puffing and blowing very early on.....oh hang on, that's cos he's a little fat unfit ****y waste of space !! Get out of our club....you fat cockney bastard.....get out of our club !!
Good away point and another clean sheet despite a much depleted squad. Until we invest properly to have a proper squad we will always have injury crisis and huge drop offs in form. I understand why he doesn't want to rotate too much when you are looking at the likes of Atsu, Yedlin, Muto, Kraft, plus a few other ****hawks, and then essentially a load of younguns. Personally I think he got it wrong and should have played a few more young players in the run in once safe. I think you could have said "pressure off, go enjoy yourselves" but I get its not really the norm. Two ways of doing it, Bruce and Pardew preferred to play with their first choice more, Rafa was big on rotation. From the outside it doesn't seem to make much difference to the end result of middling survival which is generally what they all delivered bar that one season for Pardew. I thought it was a very very poor game. I'd struggle to blame Bruce or Potter for last night. It looked to me what you get from a load of overpaid footballers when there is nothing really to play for. Dubs had little to do but made a couple of decent saves. Rose, Kraft and Fernandez did ok considering two of them are full backs. We actually defended ok all night but Rose and Kraft are not for me at all. Ritchie tried his best, but he noticeably is having more and more moments where his legs just collapse underneath him. I think this should be his last season and he looks ready to go down to the championship. Manq wasn't at his best either. ASM has just run out of gas which is natural because we rely heavily on him. Almiron to me is a cracking player and showed again last night, his attitude is fantastic even when its not all going for him. Bentaleb tried this time but just isn't good enough. Shelvey looks like he's already on holiday. Gayle was lively but had very little to feed on and he still looks like missing lots of chances. Zero tempo from both sets of players. Had either took the bull by the horns there were three points awaiting. I know the empty stands don't help but it looked like a proper dead rubber last night. As managers they must find it disappointing but I suppose both would find it hard to go through the players when they've both achieved what was asked at start of the season.
I don't think many have been saying Bruce has done much better than Rafa to be fair. Most just don't get why Rafa is lauded as a god, while Bruce is hated and useless. Despite having identical resources and having almost identical results. They'd be right too. At worst Bruce is going to finish 14th to Rafa's 13th, with 44 points to Rafa's 45. At best he'll finish 13th with 47 points. Regardless of the final result it is very clear, unless you are harbouring some kind of bias, that they've pretty much been equal in terms of performance. Good solid jobs under difficult circumstances. Some of the football has been better to watch this season, but then we took less shalackings under Rafa off big sides. Meh. 2 seasons of ****e football, achieving the end goal of mid table survival.
The rafa haters sucked the **** from Bruce's arsehole too soon and now are back peddling so fast they've got footburn.
Not a fan of either of them but Bruce did a good job,Ashley must be wondering why he paid £6m to Bruce's £1m in salaries for the same result.
what job had he done exactly? he didn't sign any of the players and we're worse than last season. The New system doesn't work either.
hmmmm I dunno I think he said pre season and until now that his job was to improve is and move the club fwd. I accept we've stayed up but in all honesty we should be anyway.
I must admit I haven't seen many Rafa haters. Its crazy, if you aren't willing to bow down and label him as some sort of demi-god, you're a hater. So if you just view him objectively and decide he's done a good solid job, its not enough. That seems to be the gist of the comments I read on here about Rafa, he's simply not as good as some were saying. I will say those creaming over Rafa, probably did so because their morale had been battered so low by Ashley, any manager coming in and making a stand against him was probably going to get love and be overrated. Its quite ironic that many of those judging Bruce by different standards, and basically not liking that he's matched up nicely to Rafa in terms of performance, are the same ones who bleated on and on about how Rafa was hamstrung by Ashley's constraints. He was but its pretty clear that Bruce has been working under the same constraints, but with the added issue of a takeover appearing closer than ever but never actually going through. I know there are some in the media who would have you believe Bruce did better than Rafa, which is clear bias because one is liked in football circles, and the other is not so popular. I just haven't seen many fans suggest he's done a better job than Rafa. It seems they generally think they've performed very similar. To be honest those pointing this out all season are the ones who have been proven correct. Its the Bruce haters who claimed relegation was a certainty, and saying he was doing a terrible job who've ended up with a helping of egg on their face. As I say there will be no more than 2 places and 2 points between them. All said and done, people can go on about goals for and against etc etc, the bottom line is they've performed to an almost identical standard.
