Steve Bruce hung me out to dry at Villa but I’ll prove I’m not a bad egg
McCORMACK LIFTS LID ON BOSS FEUD
TWO years may have passed but Ross McCormack is never likely to forget. As the striker looks to restate his worth in a loan spell at Motherwell, he has accused Steve Bruce of ‘hanging him out to dry’ with the personal and very public castigation that signalled a sharp career decline.
In January 2017, Bruce claimed McCormack had excused himself from training at Aston Villa because the electric gates at his home couldn’t open. He went further by stating he would not consider the Scotland international for selection until his attitude improved.
There would be no reconciliation. McCormack insists their relationship had broken down before that extraordinary press conference, but Bruce’s words served to alter the wider perception of his professionalism.
That accusation is one he fiercely rejects, pointing to his success as a captain with both Leeds United and Fulham.
It was from the latter that McCormack made a £12million move to Villa in the summer of 2016. But Roberto Di Matteo’s sacking and the appointment of Bruce marked a seismic shift in his hopes for success in the Midlands.
McCormack was loaned out to Nottingham Forest before similar spells with Melbourne City and Central Coast Mariners in Australia. It felt like an extraordinary position for a player who had previously been one of the most consistent, and valuable, scorers in the English Championship.
Speaking at Motherwell’s training camp in Tenerife, the 32-year-old traces it all back to that clash with Bruce.
‘I don’t think it was a personality thing,’ he reflected. ‘I think it was personal. A lot of things had been said. It didn’t happen instantly. A lot of things I will keep to myself for now.
‘Looking back, I actually started his first game in charge so it wasn’t as if he has just come in and said: “I don’t fancy Ross”. I’m not sure if I started again after that.
‘There was something massive that happened before (the comments about the electric gates). That’s what disappointed me the most because, no two ways about it, he hung me out to dry with that.
‘The gate problem was real. I never said I wasn’t coming in. I just said I’m running a little bit late.
‘The next thing, the headlines. I think it came because Villa were 2-0 up at home to Preston and conceded two late goals. Being clever, he probably tried to shift the blame on me. Which is fine but, in the process, as I said, something big happened before. Going down that route publicly was probably not helpful.’ Certainly, it created a toxic public impression of McCormack’s reliability. Mud sticks. Especially in a business as tight-knit as football.
‘What I say to people who don’t know me and listen to people who say I’m a bad egg or whatever is that I was club captain at Fulham and club captain at Leeds,’ countered McCormack. ‘That was about four years in a row. Have you ever met a club captain who’s a bad egg? Me neither.
‘And the stats. The stats back it up. Until I went to Aston Villa, I was scoring plenty of goals. It just didn’t happen there. That’s it.
‘I have seen it happen with loads of players. They get frozen out and leave.
‘It just feels there was a little more needle in mine. Did him going public make it hard for me to recover? Recover is a very good word. I just didn’t think that was the right way to go.’
McCormack now looks on at Fulham spending big in the English Premier League. With another 18 months left on his Villa contract, he admits some regret at quitting West London.
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I was maybe too quick to leave Fulham,’ he added. ‘I’m not just saying that because they are in the Premier League now and I might have been there, and I was club captain. It was maybe just a year too soon.’
He went from being hot property in the English game to assisting goals for Usain Bolt when the Olympic sprint legend had an unsuccessful crack at becoming a professional footballer with Central Coast Mariners last year.
‘The best thing about that was he was a humble guy,’ smiled McCormack. ‘He would come and have coffee with the lads like he was anyone, really.
‘I have never seen anything like it. I have been with John Terry or Barry Ferguson in Glasgow and a lot of people recognise them. If this guy walks down the street, the full street chase after him.
‘But he was such a nice guy and gelled well with the boys.
‘I set him up for his first goal. He used his pace well! He was a good guy. He could have sat on the beach chilling but he had a go.’
McCormack is now seeking to make a mark at Motherwell — with whom he had a successful stint between 2006 and 2008. Currently working to overcome a knee issue, he hopes to be fit and available for the league meeting with Hibernian on January 23.
‘I’ve got a lot to prove to myself because (my) confidence has been on the floor in the last couple of years,’ said McCormack.
‘Coming here is a good chance for me. The kids will get to see me play. If I didn’t come back to Scotland now, it would have been harder in the summer. Before you know it, you are having to see out the rest of your career in Australia and the kids never see me play again. That was a major factor. My focus now is the next five months and Motherwell.’
It wasn’t a personality thing. I think it was personal