Unless the manager tells the players to start the game slow and be outplayed how can it be the manager who is to blame ? That is the stick that some people use. Once the players cross the line it is the players and ONLY the players who are to blame when it all goes wrong. Last night proved it. The players themselves after last night said that they had been poor at the start. Steve Bruce does not send his players out like that. The true fans know that.
Look, I have no issue with anyone being critical of anything when it is needed. But constructive criticism more than what some post on here. Forget Hattie as he is just a wum. The Bruce Out crap is just that. He is a long way from the exit door for sure.
But the players play in the formation that the manager sets out and uses their tactics. He picks the players, decides when to make the substitutions and who to bring on and off. He's culpable even if the players don't perform. I'd love to have been sat next to you at half time and heard your reasoning as to why we played so badly. Or when 70 minutes ticked by and we still hadn't changed a floundering team around.
If this was a marketing company and the board had assembled an expensive, crack team of people to achieve a task and a manager to oversee them and the team kept underperforming, do they get rid of the people who are good at the job but not doing well, or the bloke who's job it is to get the best out of that team? If it's the manager's job to get his team playing to the best of their ability and they aren't doing that, then he's failing, isn't he? Regardless of the results. Think of where we're trying to get to; do you honestly think that playing like that would get us anywhere in the Premier League? You can point to the league table all you like, but face it, we're playing like crap with players that would easily get into a Premier League team. It's like watching Celtic fail to win the SPL, you wonder how on Earth they've managed it. The exact same scenario has today panned out at Chelsea, do you blame the players for Mourinho's sacking, or the fact he couldn't get them playing the way they are capable? Same players that won him the league last season, so what's changed? You could say "well we got the 3 points", but so ****ing what? So we should be doing against a **** Bolton side and an indifferent, managerless Reading team.
If it was a one off, or even twice, I could forgive it, chalk it off to experience and move on. But it was the first load of games and now the last 4. That isn't the players, it's Steve Bruce. He's the one who's in the firing line because he's ultimately responsible and it's no good claiming 'true fans' are right behind him, because I pay money to watch my team and have done for the last 10 years (before that my Dad paid) and have followed us all over the country. I'm as truer fan as any you'll see, I just don't see through black and amber tinted specs. Now the fans are saying we need to spend in the transfer window, so how much extra do the Allams have to cough up? Another £10m? £20m? Why haven't the players we brought in during the Summer done enough?
Honestly, I like Brucey, he's a likeable guy and he always says hi to me at Ferriby when the stiffs are playing. He's a good manager with a decent standing in the game. But if he can't motivate a side brimming with internationals and Premier League quality, then he's not going to get my kudos unless he works out a way to make us play to the best of our ability. I said all this earlier in the season and was lambasted for it, it's disappointing that it's taken our team's performances to drop off for people to really see it for themselves.