The game was well and truly up for Bruce
AMID the grocery misconduct, the bare-bummed pitch invader, the red-card controversy and the penalty-taker debate, there was one unavoidable truth against Preston North End on Tuesday night.
Steve Bruce, and a significant section of the Villa faithful, just didn’t like each other very much any more.
The togetherness Brucie had built seemed irreparably damaged to the extent it was impossible to see any way the manager could survive. It had become like a loveless marriage.
Yes, there were occasions when both parties still made each other smile, or stopped to remember happier times, but those were all too fleeting, all too rare.
The time had come for Villa and Bruce to put each other out of their misery by parting company. For the club’s sake and the manager’s.
It’s two years since Roberto Di Matteo was sacked, coincidentally after Villa were depressed by Preston, and, hand on heart, could even Bruce’s ever-dwindling band of supporters really say Villa are better off than they were on October 3, 2016?
By five points, yes, but in terms of a plan, an identity, the sense that this club had a leader capable of guiding them back to the big league and beyond? No chance. When a good man like Bruce has labelled his detractors as the ‘mad few’ and refused to accept criticism it meant the endgame was near.
When a good man like Bruce had to dash down the tunnel to avoid the hostility from a Villa Park past breaking point, it meant the endgame was near.
When a good man like Bruce suffered the humiliation of an idiot fan of the club he managed throwing a cabbage at him, it meant the endgame was near.
Bruce and Villa were better than that. This was not the image the football club should have been projecting to the new owners, let alone the rest of the world.
Bruce is a decent bloke, but the promotion pressure that came with being the Villa boss led to muddled thinking, underperforming and, ultimately, losing the faith of the Villa Park faithful.
Lose the fans and rarely is there any way back. Even floating voters prepared to cut him some slack for the joyless football, didn’t take kindly to having their intelligence insulted.
Suggestions his Blues past had ever been held against him were, to use a Bruce phrase, ‘absolute nonsense’.
This had nothing to do with where Bruce came from, and everything to do with where he was – or wasn’t – taking Villa.
There or thereabouts didn’t cut it any more. Villa fans need a manager they believe in and who believes in them.
As supporters got more and more exasperated during matches, and Bruce got more and more exasperated during press conferences, the situation was doing more harm than good.
It was time to go.