So this debacle at Man Utd, the uproar around a team that looks devoid of direction, a team looking like they haven’t been coached.
Ex-professionals like Graham Souness saying that at the very least Ole Solskjær needs to bring in some new coaches as whatever they are doing isn’t working.
Jamie Carragher saying Ole isn’t the man for the job. This is a team that would have gone 4th with a win against Liverpool.
Meanwhile, there’s Newcastle United – 7 wins in 39 games in all competitions under Steve Bruce, a team that hasn’t won all season long, second bottom of the league, and we are told the manager is doing a GREAT job apparently, and how stupid and unrealistic we are as supporters for wanting a change.
Okay, so it isn’t lost on me that the Man Utd squad is on a different planet to ours, and these critics who have targetted us could easily turn around and say if Bruce was performing the same way with a better group of players, they would be saying the same things as they are now… but that’s just it, they wouldn’t, because whilst our squad is in woeful need of improvement, it is also in woeful need of coaching.
Witness Gary Neville, bleating on about how he just wants to turn up to Old Trafford to watch a team with a plan, as they don’t seem to know what they are doing right now.
How is that different to what Newcastle United fans wanted?
When you are conceding shots, chances and goals for fun, how about you coach the team to be more defensive, train every day of the week and actually coach the players?
Graeme Jones said it after the Palace game. He acknowledged that the attacking display wasn’t good enough, but he needed to focus on being more organised defensively.
This is no different to what Rafa did. He knew the limitations of the squad, so he coached them to play a certain way, to be organised at the back, and then break forward when there was a chance.
Only an idiot would open up a game with our midfield. This is a team that knew what it could do under Rafa, and instead of Rafa being applauded for it, the mainstream media, not to mention certain quarters of our own fans, called him negative and boring.
There is one stat that is easily missed when comparing Bruce and Rafa points tallies. Rafa’s Newcastle conceded 25 fewer goals in that period of comparison, despite only scoring 3 less goals, and not having the likes of Allan Saint-Maximin and Callum Wilson to single handedly win a game.
Steve Bruce said in his recent Daily Telegraph interview that when he won he was called lucky… Steve, that’s because you were lucky most of the time!
In some of those games Allan Saint-Maximin would take on 3 or 4 players and slot the ball home. This wasn’t your coaching, this was a maverick playing off the cuff. We rarely deserved to win a game, I am not saying it didn’t happen, Leicester away for example, but these games were in the minority, the rest were fluked by the brilliance of mainly one player, Allan Saint-Maximin.
I know I should let sleeping dogs lie, but I just couldn’t help but listen to the comments after the Man Utd v Liverpool game, and wonder why Man Utd are judged differently to Newcastle United. It’s all comparable, Man Utd should be challenging for the title with that squad, just as we should be 12th/13th with ours, and neither club is close to their respective target and both need/needed a new manager.
Steve Bruce flukeing results was never going to continue, Rafa coached our players to reach mid-table, without any star players, and anyone who sits there and compares Bruce’s record to Rafa’s, without acknowledging how both managers reached the same target, should quite simply shut-up and concentrate on something they know and understand. One would work year in and year out, reliant on training, coaching and organisation, and the other worked when ASM and Wilson were fit.
It’s just over to Graeme Jones in the short term to try and redo what Bruce has spent 2 years trying, and succeeding, to undo.
What do you think? As ever, we would welcome your comments, opinions and views below.
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