Great, which team does your This is of course, simply your opinion. Where is your point number 1? Anyway: Your point 2 is bollocks anyway. All players have shifts in performance. It's why managers utilise a squad. Point 3 such as positioning, being a goal threat from set pieces, playing the ball out from the back, communication with other defenders, communication with our goalkeeper (the amount of times McGregor has bollocked him is unreal) and starting an attacking move from the back are sadly lacking most of the time. Positioning? You have to be in a decent position to be able to make the interceptions and tackles that Bruce has made in games. I don't believe McGregor has specifically 'bollocked' Bruce, Daily Mail article following our win over Everton. Alex Bruce - 'Hull's best defender, making 13 clearances and finding a team mate with 100% of his passes.' This illustrates point 2 as bollocks. None of our defenders contribute much in terms of goals - that isn't the main focus of their job. Point 4 Luis Suarez. Terrorised the best defenders in the PL. At home last season Alex Bruce had Luis Suarez in his pocket. He's a more than capable defender. Point 5 Daily Mail article following our win over Everton. Alex Bruce - 'Hull's best defender, making 13 clearances and finding a team mate with 100% of his passes.' This illustrates point 5 as bollocks. He is the best we have for playing the central 3rd centre half.
Bruce has played very well this season and there's no doubt about that. Davies has looked far more shaky, both on the ball and when defending and at the moment, Bruce deserves to start. In terms of defenders, I would say Chester probably misplaces the most passes. I think he's a top player but he has a tendency to misplace passes, not usually by long pubts, but risky passes inside, Robertson was also guilty of this although I don't know the stats. Bruce is probably not as gifted as our other defenders but they've been lacking form and as it stands, he hasn't done much wrong recently and has looked very solid. He's very strong in the air at winning his challenge, comparing that to a goal scoring record is farcical, that's a completely different skill. Dawson only has 7 in around 250 games for spurs, which again could be improved but nobody has pointed that out. Bruce does have a threat from corners, Chester's goal at home to Man U last season was from a Bruce knockdown for a start. The FA Cup final was arguably lost when he went off. He was outstanding that day and nearly scored from a cross (again showing he can be a threat) and we were 2-1 up and fairly comfortable when he went off. He isn't the best defender we have by any means but we have a better record with him this season than without and to write him off as poor after our other defenders performances this season is short-sighted and to me shows a bias against him. Maguire is a better prospect but right now Alex Bruce deserves some praise because he has performed closer to the level we'd expect defensively than the others.
We'd never lose two players in the same position in one game!! ah wait.. it's already happened.. Rosie & Robbo Sagbo isn't the answer.. A "double-oxymoron" I think is called a double-paradox.. such as this one.. An ancient example of double paradox is the well-known 'Liar Paradox', discovered by Eubulides, a 4th cent. BCE Greek of the Megarian School. It goes: 'Does a man who says that he is now lying speak truly?' The implications seem to be that if he is lying, he speaks truly, and if he is not lying, he speaks truly. An oxymoron would be 'there was a deafening silence in the Emirites Stadium'..
Well that article you referenced in the Daily Mail talks about the Everton game, one game in which I gave him credit. He did do well against Suarez, but it's mentioned far to often; it was an admirable performance but you can't base his ability solely on that one game, because it ignores all the ones where he misplaced passes that opened up play for the opposition, was caught in possession or gave away a free kick. He was good in the Everton game, but then so was everybody else. It's not a defenders job to score a goal, but most of our other centre halves do chip in with a few, notably Chester this season, Davies last season and Faye the season before. Alex Bruce has never actually scored for us, which is alright but he doesn't ever look like he's going to attack a corner. 100% pass rate is fine, but if I recall, most of them were to another defender or to the goalkeeper. I'm not against him being in the team at the moment, I agree that he's on a bit of form and should be in there, but I'm not being kidded into thinking he's anything more than a Championship player, because he isn't and I don't think a team that's trying to establish itself in the Premier League should have Championship quality players in it. It might be harsh, but how are we to push on if we keep these kinds of players?
He's not a Championship player though, he's playing in the Premier League and holding his own. Therefore, he's a Premier League defender. You seem to make a judgement on a player and that's it. I think you are basing your opinion on the fact Alex is the managers Son, not the fact he has done nothing to let us down.
Excellent point, spot on. However he gets in a team passes, it's how he performs once there that really matters and he does okay.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that it's the gaffers lad, the only relevence that has is that it's the reason Alex is at the club in the first place. He's made countless errors, I've lost count of the amount of times people are saying "Bruce was at fault" or "Bruce was awful". He's decent, but his ability level isn't Premier League standard, can't you see that? I can't be the only one who sees this? It's like he's playing 38 FA Cup games a season against teams that are better than him, he can do his best and sometimes come out on top, but just because he's playing in the PL doesn't mean he's consistent enough to be a top flight player. There's playing in the league, then there's being good enough. You could make the same argument for Sone Aluko, or Eldin Jakupovic; both players have come under scrutiny in the past (or present) for not being good enough for this level, yet by your standards, they're playing in the top flight therefore they're good enough.
He's part of a team however and he fits in. He's not playing alone. Secondly, on your rating system, you'd have to grade most of Burnley's squad as "not PL" and then quite a lot of other players from other teams. Where do you draw the line? Burnely drew away at Man City.. were all of their players PL for that game only?
You can tell just by looking at how they play. Players like Diame, Huddlestone and Jelavic you can tell are PL quality, whereas personally I don't consider Meyler, Figueroa or Bruce to be of that standard. Most of Burnley's squad isn't PL standard, it's why they're going to struggle. Teams can pick up results against bigger teams without having quality, we see it all the time. Out of their squad I'd probably take Boyd, Arfield and Ings as PL quality.
