Bruce cashes in
ASTON VILLA manager Steve Bruce says all the heat is on Middlesbrough tonight because of their £45million summer spend.
Villa host big-spending Boro having won just one of their six Championship games so far and already trail leaders Cardiff by 10 points.
Bruce, right, is under the cosh after they were booed off in Saturday’s 0-0 draw against Brentford. But he said: “They have to deal with pressure because they’ve been in the Premier League and invested a lot of money in the summer.
“But we have to be much better to get anything from the game.” REPORTS IT HAD all seemed such a good idea at the time. Bring in a man who epitomised the beauty of Dutch football, ‘Total Football’. A man who could take Crystal Palace “to another level”.
Those were the words of Palace chairman Steve Parish on June 26 when he appointed Frank de Boer as the club’s new manager, after Sam Allardyce’s unexpected retirement.
He said De Boer came from a “perfectly run” club in Ajax, where he had won four Eredivisie titles as manager.
Yesterday, 77 days later, De Boer was sacked, his reputation in tatters after four straight Premier League defeats, no goals, and a complete falling-out between manager and club.
Out with the new, in with the old.
Former England coach Roy Hodgson, 70, is the chosen one as Parish reverts to what Palace know best – British pragmatism.
They had it with Tony Pulis, Neil Warnock, Alan Pardew and Allardyce, then came the failed experiment with De Boer, and now they have it with Hodgson.
As the Daily Express revealed last week, Hodgson was keen on the job from the moment he was sounded out late last month and feels he has one more big job in him.
Now he has the chance to prove it, with faithful lieutenant Ray Lewington alongside him.
Hodgson, sources close to him say, is angered by suggestions he