Steve Bruce: “Newcastle was a greatly run club under Mike Ashley. We never had a lot of money to spent, we would spend exactly what the club generated & that wasn’t enough to be successful. It’s like when I managed Sunderland, I said: “In 10 years, people will look back & think I did an alright job”
by TheBiasedSportsLover
18 comments
**The full quotes from Steve Bruce talking about his time at Newcastle**
>I managed Newcastle for 2-and-a-half years. And it wasn’t easy, the COVID pandemic going on as well, that didn’t help either. But it was a different Newcastle to what it is today. I think finishing 12th and 13th, you did your job. As Newcastle then, the remit was: keep Newcastle in the Premier League.
>I absolutely adored the job, I loved coming to work even though it was during COVID, it was difficult, and I just think I was the victim. I really enjoyed it. It became tough, of course, but I think I was the victim of the whole club at the time were desperate for the takeover.
>We talk about FFP, the club would never be in any distress under Mike Ashley.
>Newcastle was a greatly run club under Mike, and I know I’m going to get slaughtered for that, but it was. The big thing is, we never had a lot of money to spent, we would spend exactly what the club generated and of course that was never going to be enough to be successful.
>It’s a bit like when I managed Sunderland, I said: “In 10 years’ time they will look back and think that fella did an alright job.”
>My remit was, I had just got in after Rafael Benitez who finished 12th, we lost Aleksandar Mitrovic to Fulham and Ayoze Perez who went to Leicester. So we lost the 2 strikers and the remit was to just keep Newcastle in the league. We weren’t a great watch, I understand that, too.
>Newcastle today are full of life. We didn’t have a team to play like that and I knew that’s what the fans wanted, but we didn’t have a team.
>I would like to think we were very well organised, difficult to beat and play against.
Delulu.
But he’s right about Newcastle being sustainably run, Geordies can have a go at Mike Ashley for his lack of ambition, and there was a lack of vision, the academy was neglected a bit. But he was far from the terrible owner that he was portrayed as. A very average club owner and were it not for Newcastle coming from their golden era when he bought the club, he probably isn’t half as maligned.
They were well run as a business I guess. Newcastle fans who thought they had the worst owner in football should’ve looked at the likes of the Oystons and realised they could’ve been a lot worse. Some clubs like newcastle wouldn’t survive relegation but they were fine both times. They were never gonna go out of business so they were better run than certain other clubs.
But well run as a football club? A club that used to be more successful before Ashley? In that respect the bar has to be a lot higher than “they won’t go out of business”.
It was a well run *business*, not a well run club (even the well run business bit is up for debate).
Training facilities were abysmal throughout his ownership.
Youth academy fell apart.
Transfer policy was woeful.
Managerial appointments were terrible.
Two relegations.
Renamed SJP “Sports Direct Arena” with no additional revenue brought in from sponsorship.
Zero cup ambition.
Zero league ambition beyond not getting relegated (which obviously failed, twice)
Appointing fucking JOE KINNEAR as sporting director.
Countless other failures that I will not include for the sake of some brevity.
Yes, there are worse run clubs. Yes, financially we were stable. If your only metric of a well run club is “not going bust”, then he did well. Bruce is however, talking absolute shite and was nothing but a yes man for that fat Cunt.
Bruce is an insecure dinosaur who needs to learn to shut the fuck up and accept that he is not cut out for modern football, and hasn’t been for many years.
One word. Joe Kinnear.
Edit: Yes, I know it’s two words, i’m tired. I’m also not a Newcastle fan.
Steve angling for a move back to replace Eddie 👀
Well one thing about Ashley is unlike some owners he hasn’t had a journalist who disagreed with him chopped up and put into a suitcase.
His human rights record is a lot better than certain owners as well
By alright job does he mean dire football and flirting with relegation? I’d understand if it was Hull but this is Newcastle FFS. Some of these ex pros especially the ones who played for Man United think that there are no other big clubs about.
The well run argument just doesn’t wash. During a PL era of increasing expansion Newcastle was sliding down the scale with not being in debt being the only metric you can argue he did well. Letting facilities deteriorate and footballing ‘productivity’ decline under his watch is pretty telling.
The only argument you can make of Ashley being better is that he isnt a literal murderous tyrannical regime with actual human blood on his hands. Or a foreign govt. Those are compelling arguments on their own but the Saudi back pocket organisations like Sky & Talksport aren’t going to allow those arguments so this easily disproved argument is the only one they allow.
Compare where Newcastle and Spurs were when Ashley took over compared to when he sold. He mismanaged the business, didn’t invest and they massively fell behind.
Even with PIF money, it is going to take a huge achievement even to catch up with even Spurs now.
I’ll always say Mike Ashley is a fantastic businessman. Can run business to a profit and run it well.
Problem is that doesn’t work in football, at least not always.
Mike is by no means the worst owner in history and at least made sure the club was solvent while using us as a giant billboard but this idea he ran the club well is laughable.
When he left our commercial revenue was worse than when he joined. 15 years ago. We were level with Spurs at that point.
Alright
Geordies all owe Wor’ Steve an apology. Come back all is forgiven 😝
Great businessman because he knows how to make money. That doesn’t transfer into football, because the knowledge of the game and the market will always be totally separate to running a business, and he clearly didn’t see it that way.
There will never be a time in the future where I will look back at Steve Bruce’s tenure and think “he did an alright job”. It was an embarrassingly monumental failure.
No they absolutely won’t, Steve.
> Newcastle was a greatly run club under Mike Ashley.
If he ran it well he would have gave Newcastle a decent deal when having sports direct as the sponsor. Instead he allowed them to pay pennies for the advertising which limited Newcastle due to lower revenue.
Overall Mike Ashley’s business empire was ran well but he would happily sacrifice one of his businesses (Newcastle) if it generated him more money overall in another (Sports Direct).
Translation: Midtable mediocrity