Are there any positives for Newcastle fans in the Steve Bruce appointment?

IN his 1999 novel Striker, Steve Bruce writes “An Englishman’s home is his castle. That applies to other nations too”, but for Bruce himself, his true home is not just any castle, but Newcastle. Newcastle United.

The much-travelled manager has now been confirmed as the club’s choice to replace Rafael Benitez and it is one that has caused yet more consternation among a set of fans who aren’t just beleaguered but midway through a War and Peace-length period of dismay. Taking over at Newcastle will ensure that Bruce completes the some-say classic set of both Sheffield clubs, Aston Villa/Birmingham and Sunderland/Newcastle. Naturally Sheffield Wednesday fans are not impressed with the timing of Bruce’s departure and Newcastle fans are not impressed with the timing of his arrival, or indeed his arrival, but historically what has Steve Bruce brought to clubs in the Premier League, and are there any signs of hope for Newcastle supporters?

‍♂️If you want to concede goals in the Premier League, Steve Bruce is your man.#NUFC pic.twitter.com/vG14JHVtNZ

— Unibet (@unibet) July 17, 2019

Firstly the bad news: of all Premier League managers to have taken charge of 250 games or more (that’s about six and a half seasons worth of matches, enough to filter out the truly unwanted and incapable), only Bruce’s former Old Trafford team-mate Bryan Robson has a lower win percentage than the new Newcastle head coach, that pair the only two with a rate under 30%. The bottom three suggests that playing under Alex Ferguson is not the managerial career boost it is often portrayed as.

Even worse for Newcastle, four of the other managers in this list: Kinnear, Souness, Allardyce and Pardew, have also had spells in charge of the Magpies. To put it starkly, now that Bruce has been installed at St James’ Park, five of the 11 least effective managers in Premier League history will have managed the club. If that sounds bad it’s because it is almost certainly is. Allardyce and Bruce will be the only managers in north east footballing history to have managed both Sunderland and Newcastle in league competition, and you don’t feel like that will enhance anyone’s sense of joy.

It’s only three years since Bruce was interviewed for the vacant England manager’s role (which went to Allardyce, yet another example of their cosmic entwining), and he has at least performed a few heroics in the top-flight, keeping Wigan, Sunderland and Hull up at various points, and taking the latter club to the 2014 FA Cup final. Let’s not ladle on too much gloom at this point; there’s every chance that Steve Bruce could keep Newcastle United in the Premier League in the 2019-20 season. If you’re an accountant, that’s a positive sentence. But football fans, and particularly ones of clubs of the size of Newcastle, want more than some survival box ticking. Drama and glory is a necessity and the supporters here are long-starved.

Close your eyes and think of Newcastle in the Premier League era and you’re likely to get the following images:

–          Kevin Keegan’s swashbuckling team [Steve Bruce teams have scored 402 goals in 392 Premier League games]

–          Famous wins against Manchester United [Steve Bruce has faced Manchester United 21 times in his Premier League managerial career and never won]

–          The atmosphere at St James’ Park [Steve Bruce has seen his team score 12 goals in his last 15 Premier League home games]

On the plus side, Bruce holds the joint-record for promotions to the Premier League from the Championship, having done so on four occasions. Futurologists might argue that this will be useful once the 2020-21 campaign begins, but should that process be necessary, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Newcastle’s new manager will still be in his position. As Bruce noted in Striker, “in a contest between human flesh and a concrete chute, the concrete will always win” and if the relentless battle for survival in the Premier League is a scramble up a concrete chute, you already know how this one ends.

Newcastle to finish in the top 10 – 15/4