‘United were not very good when I joined, a bit like now’
Steve Bruce believes FA Cup success can be the turning point for Ten Hag – just like it was for Ferguson in his day
There is a framed piece of paper on the wall in the bar Steve Bruce built in his house in Cheshire, alongside pictures of him with Nelson Mandela, Pele and a variety of images capturing the many golden memories from his glory days as a captain of Manchester United.
It was given to him as a leaving present by his former manager Sir Alex Ferguson and is a United scouting report from when Bruce was a player at Gillingham.
Written in 1982, it lists a series of his limitations and inadequacies: no pace, not good enough on the ball despite a willing temperament, and concludes he is nowhere near the level required for a Manchester United player. Five years later, Ferguson signed Bruce, via a successful spell at Norwich City, for United.
He was in the vanguard of the first great team built by Ferguson, and in his nine years at Old Trafford won the FA Cup, the club’s first league title in 26 years, lifting the trophy alongside the legendary Bryan Robson, as well as the European Cup Winners’ Cup and two league and Cup Doubles.
“I get an amazing reaction when I go back,” says Bruce over lunch in nearby Hale, in a restaurant where fellow diners include Newcastle United winger Anthony Gordon and Liverpool’s Curtis Jones, while Norman Whiteside, a former team-mate of Bruce, walks by the window.
“Once you’ve done OK here, you are never forgotten. I was privileged to play for the club and win a few things. To be old and done, to go back and people still remember me. It’s one of the highlights.
“But I would never call myself a club legend. People tell me that I am, but come on. In the [United] museum, there are displays for different people and it goes Best, Bruce, Charlton … f------ hell! I don’t believe I deserve to be there, but I’m very pleased that I am.”
The day before we meet at his house to talk about the parallels in history between the United he joined – “who had won f--- all” for years – and the modern-day mess under Erik ten Hag, Bruce had been at Old Trafford as a pundit.
He was mobbed by autograph hunters, young and old. For someone who has been attacked, derided and mocked as a manager at Aston Villa, Newcastle and West Brom in the latter years of his career, it was a reminder of the esteem with which he is still held at Old Trafford.
Indeed, after a passing Newcastle
fan shouted some abuse, one Manchester United fan replied: “He’s won more than your entire club.”
Yet when Bruce arrived as a player at Manchester United the only thing they had won in the recent years was the FA Cup, in 1983 and 1985. Ferguson was fighting to convince people he was the right man and until another Cup win three years after Bruce signed, the centre-back was also battling.
“When I arrived in Manchester we weren’t very good,” Bruce says with a chuckle. “And that’s probably a polite way of putting it. They gave Sir Alex Ferguson time. Fair play, because it wasn’t easy then. For Manchester United to finish 11th [1989] and 13th [1990], that wasn’t easy. Thankfully we won the FA Cup in 1990 and that relieved some of the pressure, for sure.
“What the hierarchy saw at the time was enough to convince them that the things Sir Alex was putting in place, the youth system which bore unbelievable fruits, things were going to get better. They saw reasons to be optimistic… then you have to look at the situation now and Erik ten Hag.
“They’ve got a choice, are they going to back him and say, ‘Right, this is our man’? For me, there has been too much change at Manchester United since Fergie left. If you keep changing… only Chelsea have managed to be successful doing it that way and they have some bad seasons, too.
“The problem is we don’t know. There is all this speculation all the time… talk about the manager’s future and the replacements being
linked, it does have a negative effect. I’ve been to Old Trafford recently and the backing for Ten Hag has been great. Forget social media, I always look at what is happening inside the stadium and the rallying call he gave on the pitch after the Newcastle game, all around me it was positive. You can tell at a game when it’s negative – f------ hell, I’ve experienced that as a manager.”
Bruce chooses his words carefully, but there is a suggestion that Manchester United were arrogant to believe their dominance of English football would inevitably continue. “Before we knocked Liverpool off the perch, if you go back to the late Eighties and early Nineties, are you telling me people would have believed it if you told them they would win one title in 30 years?
“Arsenal haven’t won the Premier League for 20 years. Man City are the flag-bearers now but will they sustain it? I’ve got a sneaky suspicion, in two or three years, when Pep [Guardiola] has gone, it will be their turn to suffer. If you’re that arrogant to think that it will just go on for ever, you will get a rude awakening.”
Bruce, by his own admission, was a journeyman footballer before he signed for United. He laughs about the scouting report from his Gillingham days, but does not dispute its verdict.
Yet he was superb for United, forming a brilliant partnership with Gary Pallister. When Ferguson won his initial league title and the club’s first for 26 years, in 1992-93, Bruce’s two late headers in a pivotal game against Sheffield Wednesday got them over the line. He scored 19 goals in one campaign and even played up front a few times when they were chasing a goal.
“I could have gone to Chelsea or I could have gone to Spurs, but there was never any question for me,” he says. “It was always going to be Manchester United. It lived up to my expectations. Even though we had a struggle for two or three years. I joined in 1987 and we won the FA Cup in 1990. We won in Europe, beat Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup the following year.
“When I went there, the club was in a far worse position than it is now. They weren’t used to winning things. I ended up lifting the Premier League trophy. What Fergie did, he recruited brilliantly. He wanted a team that mirrored him – big, big personalities.
“If you wanted to fight, we could fight. If you wanted to play football, we could play football. The ’94 team was a great, great team. It was gone by ’95. It was dismantled very quickly, but it was as good a team as you are going to get.
“Schmeichel, Parker, Bruce, Pallister, Irwin, Giggs, Ince, Keane, Robson and Sharpe in the background, Kanchelskis, Hughes and Cantona. That team was the start of it. We won the Double in 1994, should have won it again in ’95 and won the Double again in ’96 when I left. We should have won three on the spin.”
So what made Bruce successful, especially after he spent so long in the lower leagues? “I got a little break and the chance to go to Norwich,” he says. “I captained every team I played for. I must have had leadership skills. God loves a trier.
“I was never blessed with the ability of a Robson, a Hughes or an Ince. However, what I had was a desire to win. I wanted a nice house, a nice car. I wanted a few quid and I was driven to be the best I could be because then it would come.”
The conversation returns to the modern day and what Bruce thinks the future has in store for the club he still holds dear. “I think Manchester United will get back to the top, the cycle will demand it,” he said. “Look at Arsenal, look at Liverpool. The big clubs always get back in the end. It could be another 10 years. I hope not, but it could be. They have to start all over. They are in a similar situation to where they were when I arrived. There are parallels.
“And when you talk about those parallels, the FA Cup could be the stepping stone for Ten Hag. Can they beat Man City? Of course they can. They are capable of getting a result in a one-off game. That could just be the start of things, like it was for us in my day.”
‘They’ve got a choice. Will they back him and say, “This is our man?” There has been too much change at United’