Brucie Bonus

It may be the most clichéd, obvious, unfunny pun for a title that I’ve ever used. And I’m certainly not claiming to be the first to use it.

It’s safe, it’s obvious, but it’s not particularly exciting.

Which, funnily, makes it the most appropriate title I could have used.

Because that’s what Steve Bruce is.

He’s not going to introduce a style of football that reforms the game, he won’t make us into the most dangerous team in the division going forward, and he’s not going to promise the fans a cup and European football in 5 years.

And that’s a good thing.

Steve rather brings a sense of security, an aura of organisation, and an atmosphere of honesty and logic.

He stops the defence doing their best deer-in-headlights impression as soon as we are required to hold onto a lead, he gets the midfield working hard for each other, and he puts our attacking line into formations and partnerships that yield the greatest return.

On the pitch, he has the experience and tactical nous lacking in Tim Sherwood and Paul Lambert; and the honest, likeable, enthusiastic style in press conferences that Lambert, Garde, and Di Matteo (all of whom having a tendency to be bumbling and incomprehensible) all failed in. It’s genuinely refreshing to have a Villa manager that will both discuss the training and ideas the team have been working on, as well as being honest and self-critical when things haven’t gone our way.

To give an example, he’s held his hands up for isolating Jedinak in midfield against Wolves, and ever since then Miles has potentially been our most integral player. It’s this honesty and learning from mistakes that makes Bruce so damn likeable.

And it’s more than just talk. Steve’s effect on the pitch has been as obvious as Gabby’s diet.

11 points out of a possible 15 is some feat considering the lack of belief in the squad since he took over. Kodija looks capable of becoming the 20-goal-a-season striker we all hoped we’d signed, and it looks like he’s finally established a back 4, even if it meant the bold move of dropping our captain.

We seem to have abolished our curse of throwing away leads late into games, and have even began to steal some instead, and we’re finally not blindly fluffing several clear-cut chances per match.

To accomplish these things in such a short timescale - with a squad so low on confidence – is nothing short of remarkable.

Going forward, it’s interesting to see that Bruce clearly sees places in the squad for the current scapegoats and favourite of the boy-boys, Agbonlahor and Westwood.

Although January will be a better battleground to test this faith, and whilst I find it hyperbolic to call Agbonlahor “as good as any striker in the division”, there’s certainly no sense in dropping a Villa fan that has scored goals in the top division all of his life, even if he did disgrace himself last season. We just don’t have room for that luxury at the moment.

The same goes for Westwood. Fans are all to eager to highlight his short-comings, but he’s shown before that he is capable of holding his own in the Premier League, and we need all of the midfield firepower we can muster (until January at least). More importantly, he’s a hard-working, nice-natured Englishman, which is exactly the type of player Bruce has a soft spot for, so I wouldn’t expect to see the back of him anytime soon.

With all this praise-singing, it’s easy to forget that this was an appointment resisted by many.

Associations with bitter rivals are choppy waters to navigate for any football alumni entering a new club, and there aren’t too many rivalries more bitter than the one between ourselves and our Blue neighbours. Just look at the stir the McLeish appointment created before a contract was signed and a ball was kicked.

There are two key things to remember on this front.

Firstly, Bruce hasn’t squeezed into anything from the Blues’ club shop since 2007, almost a decade ago, and it’s high-time for bygones to be bygones. To give a sense of scale, Tony Blair was PM and England were just moving into the new Wembley.

More importantly, I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating: We’re the biggest club in the division, but we’re far from good enough to be picky and in too much of a crisis to put emotion over logic.

Wins against Fulham and Reading - once considered a formality - had us stood on the Holte giving an emotional rendition of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, in case you can’t tell how hard times have been for us as fans - and what our football means to us.

If you can’t get behind Bruce because of Blues, it’s time to grow up.

I don’t expect him to win us any silverware, but he’s easily the man for the job if we are to return to where we belong – he’s proved that himself in the month that he’s been here.

I personally see next season as the true reasonable target for promotion. I’d love to be proved wrong (for better not worse), but our season has only just begun – perhaps a little too late, and even with the expected foray into the January transfer window, I still see this as (yet another) transitional season.

For the time being, we should be content knowing we’re picking up forward momentum, and have finally, for me, appointed the right man.  

He is a focus on substance over style, and finally shows a significant, positive change in direction from within the club.

It only took 6 years, relegation, the constant shattering of incompetence records, an embarrassingly one-sided FA Cup final, and a change of Chairman to get us to there.

Start of Season Review

A well-timed international break for a squad stricken with illness and a seeming lack of chemistry, and everyone can finally breathe a big sigh of both relief and exhaustion as the busiest and arguably most pivotal transfer window in the last decade has finally come to a close.

It certainly wasn’t short of action and interest, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the forums were discussing a trip to West Midlands Safari Park than the Villa, with talk of Snakes, Beasts, Frogs, and now Elephants running wild (Sorry Joleon).

Signings have ranged from signing Mark Bunn to Barcelona wonderkids, and most refreshing of all we seem to have finally found adequate replacements for positions needing upheaval for years.

An all-rounder, confident left back in Jordan Amavi; a game-changer in Adama Traore; and a box-to-box powerhouse in Idrissa Gana Gueye.

All the uncertainty around Sherwood’s first opportunity to buy players proved to be misplaced, and only our very own fantastic Mr Fox could turned losing our two best players and a cup final into yet another August of optimism.

This isn’t an absolute certainty however. Amavi’s mistakes against Palace and Sunderland have arguably cost us 3 points, Idrissa seems to run out of puff in pivotal moments of games, and Traore may well be too raw to risk against premier league full-backs.

This aside, 4 points from 4 games isn’t a bad return from a side many will have tipped to go down, and most importantly we haven’t been playing badly. The points dropped certainly aren’t due to a lack of chances or trying, promising in itself. If not for jammy deflections and Micah Richard’s knees resembling a 50p coin we could easily be in a far healthier position on the table.

The team are passing with more confidence and certainty with every coming game, well-balanced by Clark and Richards looking like a formidable force at the back, Adding the experience of Joleon Lescott will undoubtedly strengthen the teams resolve – hopefully we’ll see less of the errors that cost us at Selhurst Park.

What’s impressed me more than the new signings, however, is the continuation from the current players to free themselves from the Lambert-ian football that plagued the club recently. Ashley Westwood has pushed on further up the pitch like we all knew he could, Alan Hutton is continuing to prove himself worthy of the ‘Scottish Cafu’ moniker, and Carlos Sanchez proved against Sunderland that the ball-winning, long-passing, hard-hitting ‘La Roca’ we thought we’d signed is still in him.

Things aren’t all positive though.

Gabby continues to look a liability, Gestede may have a few goals in him but is nowhere near enough a replacement for Benteke, and Ayew and Veretout have gone missing when given the chance on centre stage.

Scott Sinclair's form has been nothing short of inspiring, but we won't be able to rely on him for goals all season. The likes of Grealish, Gil, Westwood, and Bacuna need to start chipping in with a few more from midfield. 

I’ll always be optimistic, and there’s plenty to be singing about right now – but what concerns me most are Sherwood’s comments about the players needing time and asking for patience. It’s a completely valid angle to take but after season after season of transitional periods it gets to a point where results simply need to start coming.

With a hatrick of Midlands derbies on the horizon – what a chance to get off the mark and put any doubt to bed.

Summer 2014 Transfer Roundup

With Villa the second lowest spenders in the league with a roughly £7 million outgoing, ahead only of Stoke, it would be easy to write this off as a characteristically-slow and uneventful window, but with 6 signings, there may well be much for Villains across the globe to get excited about.

Philippe Senderos (Free Transfer – Formerly from Valencia)

2014 had so far been a poor year for Senderos. Leaving soon-to-be relegated Fulham to make just 8 appearances in La Liga for Valencia, before a disappointing World Cup with Switzerland, including a horror-show in their 5-2 defeat to France, made it very understandable for Villa fans to be uneasy as to his contribution to the team, especially with the notion that he may be a replacement for Ron Vlaar, should the captain leave.

But, thankfully, Vlaar is staying put, and has formed an immense partnership with Senderos in the opening portion of the season, shipping just 1 goal in 3 premier league games. He has helped to add a much needed breath of professional-feeling air to the squad, and with his vast amount of vital tackles and last-ditch blocks, the defence is looking its strongest for at least 3 years.

Not to mention that at the age of 29, he could easily have 3 or 4 more seasons at the top level.

Kieran Richardson (Undisclosed from Fulham)

Another signing that seemed relatively uninspiring, and branded as distinctly ‘average’, Keiran has started in the same vein as Senderos; with impressively solid performances.

Expected by many to come in as a wing-back to replace our string of below-par signings in that position, instead Richardson has found himself playing in the midfield three, very much as a replacement – arguably an upgrade - for the recently departed Karim El-Ahmadi. Richardson is similarly a hardworking midfielder with good passing range, but to me is superior due to his consistency; premier-league experience; and set piece delivery, three things glaringly lacking in Karim’s game. 

He has helped give our midfield a bit more ‘fight’ with his stamina and hard-working attitude, not to mention finding himself providing the vital assist to Weimann in one of the best-worked goals I’ve seen at Villa Park for a long, long time against Hull, and to me represents a decent bit of business.

Joe Cole (Free Transfer – Formerly from West Ham)

Signing a recognised England International well past his prime with an appalling injury record understandably has put a lot of people on the fence. 

On one hand, Cole offers a lot of experience and arguably a pinch of class to the side, two things certainly lacking in the side, and he also has proven he can play effectively in the number 10 position, as a creative midfielder in the final third of the pitch, again – a theme of this article – something the side sorely needed.

I’m personally prepared to give him a good chance in a Villa shirt, and will happily accept that it will take a good wedge of time and physio work to get him fully match fit and away from the dreaded injury table we’ve populated far too much in recent memory.

What annoys me most is that plenty of fans have already completely written him off, despite only playing 62 minutes for the club, in a cup-tie that didn’t seem to be treated with the greatest of importance. Providing a pertinent example of the lack of patience and eager pessimism that the current era is producing.

At the end of the day, to me this is another free signing that will be hard to prove as bad value for money in my book.

Aly Cissokho (Undisclosed from Valencia – Estimated at £2 million)

If you asked a Liverpool fan about Aly Cissokho, and his tenure at the club while on loan last season, they’d probably tell you that while he’s a fairly decent defensively, but going forward he was about as much use as a chocolate teapot, with huge deficits in technique and composure, before assuring you in his thick, annoying accent that we shouldn’t expect him to be bombing down the touchline and delivering inch-perfect crosses.

And they would be wrong.

Cissokho looks somewhat a revelation, and a long-awaited answer to our fullback problem. Strong as an ox at the back, decisive and composed in his passing, and not to mention superb in his crossing. The Newcastle game springs to mind as a perfect example of this, where he was by far the most dangerous threat on the pitch, producing 2 or 3 crosses in the first half that a fully-fit Benteke could easily have converted into a hat-trick.

It may be early days, but in my books this might just be the signing to get the most excited about. He could be a huge player for the club.

Carlos Sanchez (Undisclosed from Elche – Estimated at £4.7 million)

Sanchez, or ‘La Roca’ (The Rock), as he had been nicknamed due to his strength, is our big money signing of the summer, and is a vital one, given he might finally be the anchor in midfield we have desperately been crying out for. (far more encouraging than the rumoured plan of training Gary Gardner for that role)

From what little we’ve seen of him, he might not be the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, but he should go on to be a perfect replacement for our glaring hole between defence and midfield. He hasn’t set the world alight, but then again players in that position aren’t supposed to. He’s displayed a great range in his passing, has a strong presence on the field, and clearly isn’t afraid of a tackle. 

As he gets used to the pace and intensity of the English game, he should fit in without too much trouble, and play a pivotal role in the success I believe we are capable of achieving this year.

Tom Cleverley (Season Long Loan from Manchester United)

It was seeming increasingly likely that Tom might be our deadline-day panic signing, and there seemed to be somewhat a feel of relief when that fell through, with £8 million on a player desperately low on form dubbed too excessive and too much of a gamble for a club trying to rebuild itself. 

The news the following day that it was the be instead a loan move instead, seems a much more reasonable and safe bit of business. We will have first option to sign Cleverley, and with his contract up at the end of the season, the gambling aspect of a permanent signing will be removed.

Another player who can be the number 10 in front of the midfield that we need, Cleverley may well go on to reproduce the form he showed at Wigan, when a team with an attack is built around him rather than him playing the role of a passenger.

United fans might claim that Ferguson saw a lot in the lad, but played him too defensively, and given the freedom to push further up the pitch, there’s definitely hope for him reaching the height of his powers with us.

Overall, It’s clear Lambert had identified the same weaknesses in the side that we had in the stands, with 2 creative midfielders, a holding anchor-man, another option at centre half and 2 players able to play at left back being brought in.

All seem capable of being first teamers for top 10 teams, and all have played for their respective countries. For a spend kept to seven digits, that’s far more than I’d hoped for, and to me at least – a good indicator of the progression the club is trying to make.