No, there would of been 3 teams worse than us - even under Bruce. I think we would be very very very close to relegation under him though. BUT I don't want to think back to those dark days, I im looking foward to our MON era. I fully believe that with MON we will battle for a top 8 spot each season.
No. We would be in the "bottom 5" mini-league as it has become, but imo at least 3 of qpr, wolves, blackburn, wigan, and bolton would have still finished below us.
We should all feel fortunate that the bottom 5 scenario is not on our remit, God knows we've been there to often enough.
We would certainly be in the relegation shake up imo and a candidate for the drop. The team looked shot to pieces back in December and I feared for the worst. However, as said, that's no longer the question to hand. Mon has taken away that threat.
Back in December, I was looking at our run-in and it scared me a tad, I even wondered if we could get 35 pts+ -and now? Even Man Utd at home doesn't intimidate me. On the day we appointed Martin O'Neil I was saying 2 things - we have shown great ambition - we are no longer relegation material That said, we've all been surprised by the results achieved.
yes i think he would have took us down imo and we would have probably have been knocked out of the cup by peterborough, eric black was quoted as saying there were 1 or 2 poblems at the club just after we lost at wolves, would be interesting to know exactly what he meant
Never in our darkest period did I think we would go down and I was all for giving Bruce the rest of this season. That is till his last two games. He completely lost the plot, the fans and had to go. Bruce built a good squad, why they wouldn't play for him is anyone's guess. Poor tactics seems the obvious answer looking back. In MON though we have a manager I have wanted at Sunderland as long as I can remember. Happy days.
Don't think so, we would be fighting with Villa but would have just stayed up. However we would not be looking at can we catch Newcastle and can we make top 6/7
I'm with agreement with most on this - we would have been in trouble but probably would have scraped through in the end.
No question we would be rock bottom, we were dead and buried, remember the last two games of the bruce era were defeats to Wigan and Wolves, if he hadn't gone that would have been followed by a defeat at home to Blackburn. That's 3 of the bottom 5. Does anyone think he could have gone to QPR and got us anything other than a defeat? That's 4 of the bottom 5.
I think if Bruce stayed after the Wigan game we'd be very close to the bottom 3 if not filling one of the spaces for sure (To quote the man himself) the players didn't have a clue what to do, the manager didn't have a clue what to do, the fans were on the players backs even then, no one had any confidence and due to the negativity around the area I don't think we could have got ourselves on a decent run.
I'm saying no... Even with his defiance as to not playing McClean, and reluctance towards Gardner..... His negativity was his downfall, but the likes of Brown and O'Shea along with the will of Bardo we would have been ok........just.
Think we'd be somewhere between Villa and the true relegation dog fight. Pretty confident we'd still of stayed up however more out of default, as there are some shocking teams in the EPL this season. However that may just be my current optimistic mood clouding my opinion, as I can recall how down myself and others were after the Wigan game.
Change the words "Would" and "We" around in your Title question and turn it into a statement and you have my opinion on the answer
I think there is a very good chance that we would of been relegated as we looked and played like a relegation team. The difference between winners and losers is the ability to indentify something that is going wrong and end that process it before it goes wrong. Ellis Short clearly understands the concept of winning.
It would have been a possibility, but I think we have too much quality to have really been contenders for the drop. That said, there would have been squeaky bums aplenty in April
