Bruce responds to NUFC fans calling for him to be sacked after atrocious display vs Brentford

Steve Bruce says supporters calling for him to go are “entitled to their opinion”, insisting he’s resilient enough to handle the criticism coming his way after Tuesday’s Carabao Cup exit at Brentford.

A toothless Toon struggled to land a glove on the Championship outfit in another atrocious display, with the hosts running out 1-0 winners – despite starting the game without several of their first team stars.

Fury towards Bruce escalated on social media following the cup exit, with an @NUFC360 poll showing a staggering 96% of Newcastle fans now in favour of giving him the sack.

Here is what he said after the game, reacting to the abysmal display, awful result and calls for his head:

“I’m a resilient so-and-so, so I’ll need to be ready for what’s coming my way.

The supporters are entitled to their opinion and I accept that.

“I do think the players are playing for us (me and my staff)…maybe they’re just not playing well enough. Otherwise we wouldn’t have lost tonight. It’s certainly not down to lack of effort or determination.”

“I can only talk about the last 15 months. It’s good to get to a quarter-final but not great when you’ve got the opportunity we had.

There’s a lot of disappointed people because we’ve missed a big opportunity.

“I stand by what I said when I walked through the door and that’s that I’ll treat the cups as I see fit. I picked a team I thought was good enough to win the match.

“Unfortunately Brentford played very, very well on the night and caused us problems but I’m disappointed we didn’t perform better than we did.

“I’m bitterly disappointed and very, very frustrated tonight.

“You genuinely believe you could score but we had one or two instances where it didn’t quite fall for us. But we didn’t really create much at all. Jacob had a moment where he overran it in the first half but in the end you needed to have a bit of a break and it didn’t go our way.

“We haven’t done enough. We have to accept what’s coming our way and dust ourselves down for what is a huge challenge ahead of us in the Premier League.

“They come thick and fast but I can’t hide my disappointment because we have a great opportunity today to get into a semi-final.

“We’re all desperately disappointed of course because of the opportunity we had. I always knew it would be difficult but I still expected us to perform better than what we did.”

One can only wonder what the noise from the away end would have been like had there been a large contingent of Newcastle fans allowed inside the ground.

Our football is absolutely stinking and has been since the moment he walked through the door. Not only that, it is now evident that the fight and spirit of this Newcastle team is slowly disappearing.

My biggest criticism of Bruce is how he seems incapable of changing the way that we set up or altering his ‘attacking plan’ – despite promising to do so on several occasions.

This was our best chance to reach a cup semi final for a generation, matched up nicely against lower league opposition (who made several changes!) and a strong lineup on paper from us.

A trip to Arsenal in the FA Cup third round will likely extend our harrowing wait without a trophy to 65 years next month. But us fans will still be demanding Champions League football and Premier League titles every season, won’t we?

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7 thoughts on “Bruce responds to NUFC fans calling for him to be sacked after atrocious display vs Brentford

  1. He needs to quit before he’s sacked he is not good enough to take us forward to where we belong in the top five quit now and give us a chance of getting in the correct manager 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

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  2. Pathetic couldn’t manage a pub as in a P!££ up in a brewery
    Shocking excuse of a manager
    Eddie Howe !!!!!

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  3. You must have some better players in your youth team joelinton couldn’t trap a bag of cement amrillion offered nothing and shelvy offered even less you are a great club with fantastic fans but these clowns are a joke good luck for the rest of the season ??

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  4. What a shocker – Charlie Bennett writing a negative piece on Bruce.

    Just out of interest – where you just as keen to have Benitez sacked when we were knocked out of the cups by Oxford, or Forest (twice), or Watford, Or Hull?

    And were you one of the fans shouting when our strike force was depleted by getting rid of Perez and Rondon?

    And were you one of the fans telling the world how great ASM is and how the missing Lascelles should be playing for England – said to be our 2 best players out sick?
    Have you had a go at the club for getting rid of Toney?

    I’ll take a guess and say you don’t think social distancing is important, or wearing a mask.

    I’m just trying to get my head around your mentality, apart from the fact that you just hate the fact that Bruce is breathing.

    It’s not like Brentford are a bunch of mugs – they beat Stoke, Southampton, West Brom and Fulham – all teams at a similar level to us.

    Slag Bruce off as much as you like – but when are you going to hold the players accountable?
    We were cr@p as a group of players.

    Give it a rest mate, that bandwagon you keep jumping on must be creaking at the axles by now.

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  5. At what point does he look at himself and his tactics and say “it’s not good enough”. If he’s got anything about him then he’ll step aside and allow a manager to come in and change it before it’s too late, I’m expecting 3 hidings in our next set of PL fixtures and it’s sad that our only hope is the teams below not picking up points, how can’t he see that this sitting deep game and trying to counter attack isn’t working, it’s so easy for teams to deal with, we’re predictable at every turn, I feel heart sorry for the likes of Darlow, Wilson and our defence really when he’s expecting them to absorbe everything for 90 minutes and then wants Wilson to out away the 1 or 2 half chances he gets, we have a core set of players that I believe are good enough to push for top 10 but it’s evident that Bruce doesn’t know how to get the.best out of them, with the potential attacking threat our team has its embarrassing and insulting to the players that he doesn’t trust them enough to utilise them, Wilson, ASM, Miggy, Frazer, 4 players with bags of pace but they either aren’t used or have to spend their day chasing players back.
    Change it now or we will be relegated, that’s the only choices the club has.

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  6. If it’s true to his word and he loves the Club he’d walk away and not just stay to get a huge payoff for failure!

    No wonder his Daughter ALEX’a wants to go into management – one can make a fortune on just being paid off after wasting a clubs millions and destroying young players career’s

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