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Birflatt Boy: can we have Stoke City’s squad back again?













Steve Bruce has been around football long enough to realise why people are calling for his head today. Some have been questioning his survival as manager for a little while. It goes without saying that anyone who disagrees- Martin in Canada? – should contact Salut! Sunderland, which will find room for the opposing view. But our shadily cantakerous Birflatt Boy is no mood to grant a reprieve. It is hard-hitting, maybe harsh stuff and M Salut would take issue here and there. But these are parlous times for SAFC; supporters now seeing yet another the season unravel can hardly be blamed for feeling aggrieved …

How many more nails to close this coffin?

Football managers can make some horrible decisions. Selling or buying players in transfer deals that should never have seen the light of day, dropping key men in vital games, getting tactics hopelessly wrong (if they ever had any tactics at all) and usually ringing up a series of poor results.




In our case, this combination of shortcomings and blunders has led to relegation on more occasions than people of a certain age can remember without wincing.



Maybe there is more scrutiny of managerial decisions these days with a broader media spotlight on what goes on at a club. Be that as it may, we – Sunderland AFC- now reside a few places and a few points above the relegation trap door.

Four points accumulated out of a possible 33 (and three of them against hapless Wigan) tells a sorry tale.

In his MOTD interview last weekend Steve Bruce suggested that there was a need for an inquiry into the number and severity of soft tissue injuries that has hampered Sunderland’s season. Only seven players have completed 60 per cent of games. Week after week we are losing a couple of players in the first 20 minutes of games due to hamstring pulls and other strains. The severity and recurrence of these problems is surely not merely the result of ill fortune.

Players such as Campbell, Meyler, Mensah, Welbeck etc have all been brought back from injury dangerously too soon. Players have been sold and not replaced. Not just this season but for the whole of his tenure. Danny Collins has never been replaced despite the fact that Bruce claimed to have only sold him in the firm belief that Maynor Figueroa was on his way in. That was two years ago.

Kenwyne Jones and Darren Bent’s departures fall are of a similar stripe. We were short, Bent went and no replacement was acquired. Campbell comes back too early and now his career seems to be in the balance. Going into the last three games of the season without the injured Gyan, Welbeck, and Campbell, you would think that the only fit striker at the club, Ryan Noble would have been kept at home in the confines of bubble wrap wouldn’t you? That’s what most managers would do. Not Steve Bruce. Noble gets to play in a meaningless midweek fixture and gets an ankle injury.

We start against Fulham with Steed Malbranque and Stéphane Sessegnon up front. Sessegnon has played there, but Malbranque hasn’t found the net for years and has an appalling goals tally for a midfield player. An inability to shoot is a hurdle for a forward player and it’s a higher hurdle for Steed than most.

The result, of course, was that we didn’t score. Steed was not helped by the supply of the “Egyptian Beckham,” a player who has failed to produce any service of note from the right flank all season but invariably gets a game ahead of a man with the best cv of any outfield player currently at the club; Bolo Zenden.

Elmo is still a loanee, and we can only hope that his stay is short and that he never becomes a Sunderland player. He is quite simply hopeless, and there is nothing else that needs saying about him.

The other loanees such as Muntari, Onouha, and Welbeck have no vested interest of SAFC. Whilst it may be the case that all footballers are mercenaries these days, that epithet is even more appropriate for loaned players. Muntari’s contribution to our cause has been so lamentable that he should be sent packing this week. A talented player who has turned up to take the money and is quite happy to embarrass himself through his own indolence.

We have had other managers who have started brightly and then been found wanting. There are few who can come close to the complete meltdown at all levels under Bruce. It is incompetence and witlessness of the first order. He has complained about injuries and their recurrence, yet it at his insistence that players have been brought back when clearly unfit. It is a disservice to the club, and a risk to the long term well being of several players. It goes beyond poor management.

Despite spending unprecedented sums on building his squad, we only own half the team that is losing every week. He now says that we need eight players for next season!

Quite how much money has been wasted on the likes of Da Silva, Riveros and Angeleri we may never know. I look at Stoke’s position in the table and wonder why it is that a side that regularly contains Whithead, Sorensen, Delap, Jones,Collins and Higginbottom is outperforming the team that has been “improved” under the stewardship of Bruce and Black.

Bruce’s “management” is a catalogue of poor judgement, incompetence and gross stupidity. I rather doubt whether a man responsible for a run like we’ve had would still be in a job at any other club. A 3-0 defeat to Fulham; a side that travels about as well as Newcastle Exhibition is the last straw.

Bruce is right of course. We need at least eight players. All we can hope is that he will no longer be responsible for signing them.






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Tags: Birflatt Boy, Steve Bruce, Stoke City, Sunderland

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2011 at 10:46 am and is filed under Birflatt Boy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Birflatt Boy: can we have Stoke City’s squad back again?”





Yiannis Skindilias says:

May 2, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Simple math for me… The best football we ‘ve played since January is the second half against Wigan (a two-man team). When did we play better? When (unfortunately) our last striker on the books got injured. To summarize it: everything went better when the “Plan” came out of the equasion. When the players did just what they thought was better or whatever they felt like to be honest and they score 3 goals! A week laterthe same 11 players come on the pitch with a so called “plan” and get thumped 3-0 at home…. worst home score since boxing day under Keane (and that was against a full strength Man Utd side).
I’ve never left a match before the final whistle even at times when the team was losing 4-0 at halftime. But i don’t blame anyone who did it, as i did it for the first time to… and i ‘d travelled quite a bit to watch the “easter trio” of games.

PS: Whitehead and Collins would have been stars in this team and that would probably be down to effort rather than skill.

PS2: Anyone rethinking the January possibility of getting Carew or Philips in at the time?

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salutsunderland says:

May 2, 2011 at 1:08 pm


Stoke’s squad is better, in my view. Simple as that. And even if I’m wrong, it would speak volumes about the competing managerial qualities.

 

I don't think they have the quality that we have... They don't have players who shone in the world cup or with the flair and creativity that we have (in theory).

Our boys are class, some of them anyway, yet they aren't playing.

 

pride mate pride they play for the badge not the wages

 

Without a shadow of a doubt they have us beaten there.

 

Think individually our players are better.

I think the man management skills of Pulis are better than brucies.

 

SO is it we want Pulis or not

 

He'd be my choice...

 

PLEASE GOD not Pulis, its one think getting the best out of average players playing a direct unattractive style of football which belongs in the dark ages. But it is also another thing to build and manage a team of young up and coming footballers with so called (so some of them think) stars.

 

Now that Pulis has some better players they've started playing actual football.

 

RedandWhite - I didn't see that when they played us. Same old same old!

 

No, you're right, when they played us they were anti-football! Plus, they got 2 offside goals. What would we give for those 3 points that were robbed off us now?

 

Just the one would have done I reckon!! I have not seen them play "football" for a long time.

 

If SB does get sacked in the summer (which i dont believe he will) my choices to replace him would be.

David Moyes, Martin O`Neill or Martin Jol

All three are top managers.

I do like SB but 2 seasons in a row this has happened to us after xmas we have been ****e.

I do trust NQ & ES so whatever they decide to do in the summer i will support 100%

 

nooooooooooooooooo ...doesn't Pulios boast about the local connection and a well-run, prudently run 'local' club?

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.., there's nothing for us there.

 

A good read Rog, but we will have to wait until the summer, IMO, for the solutions, if any.

 

Yep Bill its scour the articles time.

 

I think the opening article is a tad harsh on Elmo he aint that bad

As for Brucie he should stay he has made mistakes but I back the bloke and think he will improve us next season.

If he did go though the man to get would be Moyes, he has shown at Everton with limited money what a good manager he is, I think he would seriously consider us, we are a club wanting to improve and he would get something he hasn't had at Everton and that is money to spend

 

interesting article and some of the points are pretty hard to argue against !

The simple fact is that Stoke have out-performed us with a number of players who SAFC and SB in particular decided weren't good enough.

Quite a few of the signings SB has made haven't worked out and the injury record is appalling.

I'm having my doubts about the man - twice running in the second half of the season we have all but collapsed and shown relegation form - and we're still not safe now !

I wouldn't want Pulis but questions are rightly being asked about Bruce - and I was one who was keen to give him a chance ! Next season - if we stay up - if the same pattern is repeated then a decision on the manager's future will have to be made.

 

nice balanced view mate

 

Logic says that Christian Riveros, World Cup QFist, is better than Dean Whitehead, that PDS , WC QFist, is better than Higginbottom, that Angeleri, Argentine International, is better than Danny Collins. But who has made the bigger impact this season? And why has Steve sold one and wont play the other two? Jones vs Gyan is less clear cut, I think they re about even on actual impact but Gyan cost more.

Im happy with Gordon and Mig vs Sorrensen

Dont you sometimes wish we had a the long thrower Delap?! Roy Keane sold him a tad too early me thinks after his broken leg?

Football s a funny game!