Steve Bruce bingo – Full House! He’s completed his card at the Hawthorns…

I often see Newcastle United fans questioned on social media / online, ‘why this childish obsession with Steve Bruce?’

My own answer always is, well he started it…

Yes, as Newcastle United fans, our history with Steve Bruce goes back a long long way.

Indeed, even before he had a go at management for the first time in 1998.

Like many of you, I was inside St James’ Park on 20 October 1996.

One of the greatest matches in living memory if you are a Newcastle United fan, Keegan’s NUFC hammering Man Utd 5-0.

By this point, Steve Bruce had signed a permanent deal to play for Birmingham City.

The next day (after a busy night post-match in Newcastle) I sat down to watch a video recording of the 5-0, having made one of my best ever decisions of booking that Monday off work, deciding I would be getting drunk regardless of the result BUT when it ended up 5-0 and United having absolutely battered the Mancs…well, it was going to get messy for sure.

In the studio to give ‘expert’ analysis. they only had one ‘expert’ as a guest.

Steve Bruce.

As became clear, the reasoning was that as somebody who had supported Newcastle United all his life AND then played for Man Utd, they didn’t need two experts to give opposing views, with Steve Bruce they had somebody who could do both jobs, see both sides, give a balanced view.

Well, I watched the entire match and listened to what was said at half-time and full-time, keen to relive it all. Then watched it all again. The next day I did the same, well only once more that Tuesday night.

The match action was obviously something you could never tire of watching, however, listening to Steve Bruce, I repeatedly felt like kicking the TV screen in.

The lifelong Newcastle United looking like he was set to burst into tears at any moment.

On one of the very few occasions Man Utd actually got into United’s half, Poborsky produced an absolutely obvious dive when Pavel came sliding out, Steve Bruce absolutely outraged. Man Utd were already 1-0 down and Bruce saying time after time that if that penalty had been given and scored, he was absolutely convinced that the final result would have been very different.

I just found it totally bizarre, up to that point I don’t think I had any big impression in terms of what I thought of Steve Bruce as a person. Like I think pretty much everybody else, I just knew of him as a very decent level centre-back, who had done well for Man Utd but never played for England. He had a reputation for scoring goals and I knew he was from up here, said to be a Newcastle fans all his life, also a product of Wallsend Boys Club.

I had my eyes well and truly opened that day and in the days that followed as I yet again watched how he had went on, honestly, to hear Steve Bruce you would have thought Man Utd had controlled all the match and scored with five lucky breaks. Rather than the truth, which was that it could and should have been more than 5-0, Newcastle excellent all game.

Steve Bruce clearly not wanting to give the victors any credit at all, never in a million years would you have guessed he had been (supposedly!) a Newcastle United fan all his life. Indeed, I think if Alex Ferguson had been in the studio as well, it would be him you’d be thinking was clearly a Newcastle fan, if indeed there was any at all in the studio.

Anyway, time moved on and in 1998 Steve Bruce eventually became a manager, at Sheffield United.

He only lasted ten months before walking out on them for a better job at Huddersfield and this set in motion a managerial career full of Steve Bruce often walking away swiftly for more enticing job, or sacked and receiving increasingly more lucrative pay-offs.

Now he was on the radar of Newcastle fans (after his 5-0 TV punditry appearance), Steve Bruce would then keep cropping up in the following years, making any number of comments when manager of the likes of Sunderland and Villa, which made you think, how on earth is he supposed to be a Newcastle United fan?

Then the fateful day came.

After forcing out Champions League winning, double La Liga winner, double Europa League winner, Rafa Benitez, Mike Ashley replaced him with Steve Bruce! Newcastle United fans absolutely appalled (apart from Steve Bruce…), a Championship level manager at best, forcing his way out of Sheffield Wednesday after only a few months when they had shown him great consideration due to events in Bruce’s personal life, with Mike Ashley paying millions in compensation to Sheff Wed. The world had truly gone mad.

Newcastle fans seeing that this was yet another desperate puppet (like JFK, Carver, McClaren, Pardew etc) who would take the job under any conditions. With Ashley having starved Rafa repeatedly of realistic funds, within six days of Steve Bruce taking the job, Newcastle paid £40m for Joelinton. If you had any doubts about Bruce’s stooge / patsy status, he went on to claim that including the £40m Joelinton deal, it was he (Bruce) who had the final say on all transfers!!!

Despite getting relative fortunes spent on the NUFC squad compared to Rafa, Steve Bruce stumbled along, exactly as Newcastle fans had feared. Incredible luck in fair few matches and a massive reliance on ASM, saw Newcastle avoid relegation in his two full seasons. We knew it was only a matter of time though when disaster would strike.

Only the takeover and Eddie Howe saving Newcastle in the end, as Steve Bruce was sacked exactly 23 years to the day since that NUFC 5-0 win over Man U.

Steve Bruce insisting he didn’t think he could face ever working again as a manager / head coach, it having supposedly been so traumatic when he held on to the very end to get his reported £8m pay-off, rather than doing the decent thing and walk away, admitting what a terrible job he’d done.

Newcastle fans aren’t stupid, just over three months later he was…back in management, his football connections / friendships allegedly ensuring he was handed the West Brom job without even having to be interviewed, nobody else considered by the Baggies.

For somebody with such a woeful record in management, especially in the later years, quite astonishing that Steve Bruce was back in work.

No wonder Bruce is so deluded, the thinking clearly…’so many clubs have given me a job so I must be great.’

Having experienced two years and three months of Steve Bruce, we learnt so well to spot the increasingly desperate stages of his time with your club. The excuses / quotes he would come out with.

So moving to the present day, Steve Bruce has somehow managed to crawl past eight months in the job despite such a shocking record.

Remember, West Brom were fifth in the Championship when he arrived in early February and Steve Bruce declared the squad was good enough for automatic promotion, never mind having to settle for a play-off spot.

His first five games saw four defeats and one draw, instead of automatic promotion, Steve Bruce had managed to instantly take them out of any chance of even making the play-offs. Only two wins in his first ten matches and only a few late season victories painting over a few cracks.

Looking from afar, Newcastle fans were playing Steve Bruce bingo, looking for him making the same claims / actions as he’d done when things were falling apart with NUFC.

West Brom only finished tenth, a massive 21 points off the automatic spots last season, yet the Baggies didn’t sack him.

This season they are predictably in the relegation zone, having won one of only thirteen Championship matches.

The good news is, that following yesterday’s dismal goalless draw at home to Luton, myself and other NUFC fans have now completed our Brucey bingo card, after he came out with this classic yet again….

Steve Bruce after West Brom 0 Luton 0 – Saturday 8 October 2022:

“I would like to think that after more than 1,000 games, I do know what I’m doing.”

It is almost as if he is asking himself the question…surely if I have had all these jobs and managed over a thousand games, then I must know what I’m doing….

Well, the results and performances say otherwise.

Including the final stages of his time at Newcastle, the last 38 Steve Bruce league games have produced seven wins, a win ratio of 18 per cent.  I think the evidence is surely that he quite clearly doesn’t know what he is doing.

Albert Einstein famously gave this definition of insanity:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Clubs keep giving Steve Bruce jobs, he then keeps on employing the other Steves as his coaching team, only this time adding his son Alex to the gravy train.

When it comes to completing this Steve Bruce bingo card with West Brom, we have heard it all, again!

All the opposition teams are presented as world beaters, Bruce saying he went very defensive against Luton because they are such a quality team (they have now won four of their last 13 Championship games).

He has recently gone down the route of just changing loads of his team seemingly at random, praying that he will accidentally stumble over the winning formula.

After losing at home to Birmingham last weekend, Steve Bruce made six changes to his team in midweek, then losing to Preston he then made another four changes yesterday. It sound like he is also playing bingo, when it comes to picking his team.

Steve Bruce has also been keen to deflect criticism from Baggies fans, pointing to how he knows best, all these years / games as a manager, it just goes in and on.

Reality is that in these past 24 years, Steve Bruce had never won anything as a manager and hasn’t even finished in the top nine in the Premier League.

West Brom fans had better watch out because they will be increasingly in the spotlight when it comes to Bruce’s pundit / football, journalist mates putting a campaign together.

Just remember how bad things had become at Newcastle United with NUFC camped deep in the relegation zone and only three points from seven games by the time we got to the takeover, the new owners saw themselves ridiculously targeted by the media, demanding that Steve Bruce HAD to be given a ‘sentimental’ 1,000 game as a manager. Yet another defeat (at home Spurs) and not a single NUFC player with an effort on target after Wilson’s second minute opener.

Just watch, Bruce’s media mates will be telling West Brom and their fans that Steve Bruce has to be given the chance of making it a ‘sentimental’ quarter of a century as a manager (1998-2023) no matter how much of a disaster he is proving to be.

We can all laugh as Newcastle fans now…but as for West Brom supporters, they have our deepest sympathies.