Bruce’s Days Numbered

It looks like Steve Bruce’s days as manager could be numbered following our defeat to Norwich last night.

You always know a manager is on borrowed time when they talk so openly about pathetic performances. It’s also a telling sign that a manager doesn’t have the dressing room completely with him when he criticises players for not stepping up to the mark and earning their vast sums of money.

Last night as Bruce reflected on the performance of the team he commented that journalists would have to speak to his bosses about whether he would keep his job.

The calls for Bruce to go have been reasonably consistent for quite a while following our relegation from the Premiership last season, but last night for the first time a very vocal section of the St Andrews faithful called for his head.

With performances so far this season not exactly worth writing about, players failing to perform following his ‘motivation’ and team selections and tactics often leaving fans bemused and confused you can feel the axe being raised.

Bruce didn’t help himself by making such wholescale changes to the team; the number of new players we have would always take time to gell properly but having tasted the Premiership fans don’t want to see the Blues starting from scratch again, they wanted to see the team that was highly paid and who consistently failed to perform last year make their apologies by gaining us promotion.

Building a fresh squad with players from the Championship has failed to even give us a Championship performance level so far.

Bruce promised he would learn from his mistakes last season, and it seems not only has he not learnt but he’s making a whole new series of mistakes to add to them.

If Bruce does survive to the next match he has to get it right. There can be no more chances, even for the most patient Bluenose.

On our current form it won’t be automatic promotion or even the playoff places we will be gunning for. At the moment we are losing points and slipping down the league and the last thing we need to do whilst we are in a rut is get sucked down far enough that last season repeats itself.

If Bruce can’t get it right and get it right quick, then changing the manager can be our only solution.