Sky Sports pundit Micah Richards has described Steve Bruce as a ‘top manager’, but has revealed how his training methods rarely replicate what we see from his team on a matchday.
Richards worked with Bruce at Aston Villa and was full of praise for his former boss ahead of our 2-1 win against West Brom on Saturday, a game where Newcastle did just enough to eke out another solid top flight victory.
However, rather bizarrely, he stated that despite his training sessions featuring a real focus on attacking football, he never transferred that style into games – instead adopting a counter-attacking approach that focused more on sitting deep and being solid defensively.
Here is what he said in the studio:
“In training, Steve Bruce was so much more expansive and in games, he’s solid and will hit people on the counter-attack.
“But, in training, everyone is in. People are overlapping and stuff.
“I think he just needs to believe more in his ability because he’s a top manager and he needs to show that and give that confidence to the players as well.”
It is quite peculiar that he would drill a side to play a certain way on a day-to-day basis, only to completely contradict himself when it comes to matchday.
It is unknown whether he is continuing these methods at NUFC but whatever he is doing, it appears to be working. Our style of play may not be beautiful on the eye – but it is certainly effective. The results so far this season has put us in a pretty comfortable position ahead of a January transfer window and a league cup quarter final, and Bruce deserves credit for that.
It would be great to see us play open, attacking football while picking up results, but if it was a straight choice between the two then give me the points every day of the week!
Tomorrow night’s game against Leeds will see an interesting clash of styles go ahead to head. If we manage to pull off a third win in a row, then we really can start to look up that table.
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