The definitive Newcastle United preview for 2019/20 (and for pretty much every season between now and Mike Ashley's death, as long as you change the relevant names. Apart from the various seasons when Ashley will cause Newcastle to be relegated to the Championship. Unless he succeeds in his subconscious desire to put Newcastle in the third tier).
Even before Steve Bruce was officially vomited forth as Head Apologist of Newcastle United, the dishonesty kicked in. Certain Newcastle fans, we were told, weren’t willing to give him a chance because once upon a time he’d managed budding League One stalwarts sunderland. This creates a neat circularity. When Bruce was sacked by the Wearsiders (so long ago that they were a struggling Premier League club), he tried to tell the world the mackems hated him because he was a Geordie.
Here we must confront the basic question of a manger’s role. It itsn’t to achieve results. It isn’t to play with a recognisable style. It isn’t to improve players. It’s to keep drawing a paycheck as long as possible. To that end, it’s a mistake to worry about failing. The cardinal error is not to have someone else to blame when you do fail, so that another club employs you soon afterward.
As with Sam Allardyce and Alan Pardew, so with Bruce – he bleats his excuses, when the reality is sunderland and Newcastle fans despise him because there’s no reason not to. Tactical nous? Well, when he returned to the EPL with Hull in 2013, pro-Bruce journalists were trumpeting that he’d learned as a manager because he was playing three at the back. In fact, a three-man defence was being used by hacks like John Gregory as early as 1996. Ability to improve players? There’s no especial evidence of this beyond the ‘even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day’ rule. Recognisable style? That I’ll grant you, with the regrettable caveat that it’s a style every fan dreads their team adopting – not much possessional structure, just pass the ball out wide, put in crosses, and hope every other coach in the league can’t teach their defence where to stand.
These are the qualities that led sunderland to thirteenth place in 2009-10, despite record signing Darren Bent’s 24 goals, coupled with the signing of Lorik Cana and the emergence of Jordan Henderson to strengthen their midfield. Yet sunderland ended up conceding more goals than they had the season before, when Roy Keane had been ineptly replaced by Ricky Spragia.
The next season, Bruce took Onuoha and Welbeck on loan from the Manchester clubs. Asamoah Gyan arrived for yet another transfer record. Bruce had sunderland in seventh when Darren Bent demanded a transfer. Bent joined Villa, Stephane Sessegnon was signed, and the mackems dropped to tenth, a mere three-point improvement on the season before. They’d conceded the exact same number of goals as that campaign, and their final 14 games brought only two clean sheets. In the first 13 games of the next season, sunderland managed 12 points, at which Bruce was booted out the door. But not before he’d splurged £12 million on Connor Wickham.
During Bruce’s tenure, sunderland’s wage bill never dropped below 77% of the club’s turnover. He couldn’t complain about lack of investment. He’d suffered a humiliating 5-1 defeat in the Tyne-Wear derby, which he blamed on sunderland fielding a lot of young players who lacked experience of intense atmospheres. These players, however, were almost to a man his signings. And he himself had appeared in pre-game press conferences oozing a complacent certainty his team would win. After the game, this transformed into hilarious, maiden-aunt indignation that NUFC's PA announcer had played 'Daydream Believer' at the final whistle, so that the Geordies could change the lyrics to insult Bruce. Come the return, Bruce said, failing spectacularly to learn his lesson, he'd choose a record to play when sunderland won. Bruce so successfully motivated his team for that game they only avoided a 1-0 defeat thanks to an injury-time fluke.
How shrewd of Newcastle United to engage this man to develop under-25 year olds with no experience in the EPL into stars.
As it happens, I think Newcastle might give a decent account of themselves today. But even if they don’t, Bruce won’t lack sympathy from his media mates, and the least molehill will be presented as a mountain of achievement. Bruce is ‘decent’, a ‘good man’ we’re told. It’s also been said that prior to gaining the job Bruce had a good relationship with Mike Ashley. Media reports suggest some of the players find his approach to man-management more palatable than that of Benitez.
Consider Ashley’s other footballing allies: Joe Kinnear – a Walter Mitty figure, Alan Pardew – a rather slippery individual, and Dennis Wise – a convicted criminal. Is it to Bruce’s credit that he should feature in this company? It’s an obscure point, but something a lot of Geordies find irritating about Bruce is his accent. He talks like a working class lad putting on his ‘posh voice’. He seems to be someone who builds good relationships with everyone. Is that a sign of decency, or a creep who knows who to network better than to do the job he's paid for?
Nor do fans of a certain age forget 20 October 1996. Newcastle United hammered Manchester United 5-0. And, believe it or not younger readers, in those days the Fallen Empire were the best team in the country. Steve Bruce was a studio guest. He’d left Old Trafford in the summer of 1995 to join Birmingham City. So what do you think was his reaction to his boyhood team, the team of his father, thumping his old employers? Why, he had a face like his cat had been steamrolled. At that moment, Steve Bruce’s true loyalties were revealed. Confirmation came in 2004 when he received a misguided offer to replace Bobby Robson as manager. The man who’d walked out on Crystal Palace to manage Birmingham less than three years before meekly submitted to the Bluenoses’ insistence he honour his contract, then spent the years after 2006 (when his leading Birmingham to an embarrassing, avoidable relegation shredded his reputation and hopes of the Man United job), turning the maudlin sentiment about NUFC up to eleven.
Then there’s Bruce’s strange career as a novelist. He wrote three books, respectably named Striker!, Sweeper! and Defender! that have been derided by the few who read them. Now, a footballer who loves literature deserves to be treated generously. As a general rule, so do authors. But what are we to make of the fact Bruce’s hero is a football manager named Steve Barnes? It’s impossible to read Dan Brown without feeling he wishes he were Robert Langdon, but to pretty much make yourself the hero of your own novel and make the most dilatory effort to conceal it from the world suggests and extraordinary mixture of vanity and foolishness.
The contrast between Bruce’s and Benitez’s personalities here is unavoidable, because Benitez, prickly or not, has the winners medals, where Bruce has to settle for one lost cup final and a pair of tenth place finishes. Oh, and those two relegations as well as the lost playoff final in 2018 against a Fulham team reduced to ten men for much of the second half. Ashley complained no matter what he offered Benitez, Rafa always wanted more. He might want to check the transfer churn at Bruce’s previous clubs – that fabled likeability doesn’t appear to build working relationships with players that endure.
Another irony is that NUFC likes to operate with small squads, where Bruce’s back catalogue is one of big squads that he needs to use in full, because wherever he goes an injury crisis follows. Could it be that his training comprises too much of matey jokes, and too little 21st century conditioning?
The truly depressing thing about this upcoming season is that Newcastle United fans will be treated to either failure, or failure presented as success. Even with Ashley depressing the club’s commercial potential, NUFC had the eighth-highest turnover in the 2017/18 campaign. But £30 million-plus of that went into Ashley’s pocket rather than Benitez’s transfer budget. The model is to plough the bare minimum into the team, and keep back £30 million to cover the financial shortfall of another relegation. And Bruce is the perfect man for this model – so low are expectations that 17th place will be that much easier to portray as a positive. Bruce’s CV is poor enough that he’ll be chuffed. His mates will boost him, as will the xenophobes who are glad to see the back of Benitez at all, let alone his replacement by a Proper Football Man.
The best-case scenario goes as follows:
Bruce doesn’t meddle with Benitez’s foundation too much, so the defence is relatively solid.
Joelinton, Saint-Maximin and Almiron between them manage to replace the 23 goals of Perez and Rondon.
Longstaff continues to develop.
If the above happens, two from Everton, Leicester, Watford and West Ham disappoint, then Bruce may finish as high as ninth. It will be said Ashley is vindicated. The fat, ugly, dirty-looking man will grin. But next summer laurels will be sat on. Then stagnation will set in, and the steady drop down the table will start. And before you know it, NUFC will be in the Championship again, and Ashley will be doing another self-pitying speech in front of someone who calls themselves a journalist, but is in fact a traitor to their profession.
The worst case scenario is so obvious it doesn’t need airing again.
