St. Maximin

We competed for the top 10 before Brute arrived and since then he's been given £100m to improve the team. I'm not having it that 4th bottom is our rightful position. The sum of our parts on the pitch is better than 17th. They've proven that. As I said Rafa was a different level. Most okay Premier League managers wouldn't have us competing there normally. Bruce may be terrible still, but he shouldn't judged on how he does compared to Rafa (unless he starts making silly comparisons but that's a different story). He had £100m but £40m was spent on a player the club were desperate to sign for some bizarre reason and was nowhere near that level. Rafa had Rondon and Perez - may have cost next to nothing but we definitely had more goals in that team on paper. We can talk about how we're doing compared to under Rafa and how much money Bruce has had, but is our squad really better than those of Fulham, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Burnley, Southampton, Aston Villa etc? I'd only say Burnley out of those and Fulham, Palace and Brighton are a similar level through having more depth than us. Take away ASM and Wilson for large parts of the season as stated and we have very poor alternatives as well as the poor players in our starting line-up.

I think six points from our last four games is a good return and we were never going to get anything at Stamford Bridge. More annoyed that Fulham won at Everton. That was a dreadful result for us. With ASM and Wilson both missing two months of the season, a relegation battle is really where we should be. Almost every squad in the league is on a par or better than ours in my opinion, so we wouldn't be much better off with a half-decent manager. Obviously would with Rafa but his CV is a different level to most. I hear people saying we should be competing for the top 10, but they are clearly better than ours with a better injury record. We have players like Shelvey and Lewis in our starting 11 after all. Anyway, despite all that Bruce is horrendous.

Not really getting our formation. We have no good strikers available, so we are playing two up front while playing them both as wide-forwards? Why not just play 4-2-3-1 and keep Miggy in the AM role? Makes sense to me. If he gets injured I wouldn’t even mind Joelinton coming in there too much...

But Bruce is doing a great job apparently. Still some fans of other clubs in the comments saying "where do they expect to be?" Why is it too much to ask for NUFC to be better than 17th? Why would anyone think NUFC should be happy with 17th? Baffles me! Tbh I don’t think it’s far from where we should be on paper. Probably 15/16th imo. The way we’ve gone about things is a different matter of course.

Probably because he's goaded our fans after we've won a game. Fair, but it’s not surprising really given he’s family. He’s so irrelevant.

Whether it’s ‘death threats’ or not, why are our fans even talking to his son on Twitter? He’s not our manager. He’s a nobody to me and I couldn’t care less what he thinks.

Honestly I don’t get why people are so intent on not believing him. Yes he’s an idiot and we don’t like him, but he probably has a better idea of whether it’s true than us, so not really our place to make a judgment that he’s lying and ultimately it doesn’t take away from the fact he’s been a disaster if he is sometimes correct about something. Fwiw this has been blown out of proportion. The comments were more in general about death threats and not specifically him. Yes he implied he had been the recipient but in fairness he never stated how excessive they were to him. But given how many awful people hide behind social media profiles to say disgusting things, is it really that surprising if some people (even if just a small minority) have indirectly made such threats?

All I can speculate is that it’s because he’s eccentric, a skilful winger and French. I should probs change my name to something better also tbh.

Considering he’s had a lot of criticism for his end-product, 13 goals in not much more than a year, with a poor manager and team, normally out of his favourite position and at times not picked... isn’t bad at all. And his work rate is still the best thing about him.

That’s just in league. Wikipedia only includes those on the side. In total he has a more respectable 11 in 78, presumably as he starts a lot more in cups. That quite about Saivet was brilliant though.

There’s been shortage of issues in some way related to VAR, but often it’s scapegoated when the real issue is confusion over rules, or alternatively people aren’t looking at the bigger picture. For example a lot of people were complaining about Ings being very judged marginally offside on Sunday, but that was the original decision and he only scored because the ref typically plays on nowadays regardless of how close it is. When he’s correctly judged offside it would be a bit odd to overrule the linesman regardless of how close it was!

Really expected better from Neville, but as annoying as the ignorant and lazy pundits are, when you look at our midfield and the fact ASM has been missing a while, we should really be in a relegation battle under most managers. I mean Matty Longstaff is deemed a first choice starter currently. So as horrible as the football has been, most managers probably wouldn’t have done better in terms of points. Just chances are they’d have had less luck in the first quarter, while scoring more in the second quarter of the season. So I can see why it looked silly to people calling for Bruce’s head, at least until that disaster against Sheffield United.

Because he doesn't need that couple of mill at all. Its just greed at this point, he will get another job easily (thanks to us), and he's already set for his entire life. He's been more than ahppy to ditch clubs before, Hull for instance because he didn't get what he wanted. This is from that time: Lol He’s made a living off ditching clubs. He never walks away from challenges though, does Steve. Clearly Palace, Birmingham City, Wigan Athletic, Hull City and Sheffield Wednesday were clearly not challenging enough for him. At least he’s accepted his current job has been a challenge.

To me it’s only worth comparing when people make ignorant comments about Rafa being no better. He got plenty of things wrong in my own opinion, but compare not just his management but his vision and fan engagement with Bruce... A few months ago I stuck up for Bruce a bit also ?. Apologies for this. Rafa got the most important things right. What that man could of done to improve the team with some small investment would have been brilliant. Good of you to apologise but ignorance is no excuse. Oh I agree with all that. I love the bloke, but I just wouldn’t want to bring Rafa into the debate over how well (or not) Bruce is doing and I do often also agree with people who criticised him in spite of that. It’s the lazy and ignorant comments about Rafa and/or Bruce that annoy me. Haha personally I was happy to cut him slack for his non-existent tactics as the spirit was good and the players seem to be playing for him. It was only a matter of time for the mess to unfold though...

To me it’s only worth comparing when people make ignorant comments about Rafa being no better. He got plenty of things wrong in my own opinion, but compare not just his management but his vision and fan engagement with Bruce... A few months ago I stuck up for Bruce a bit also ?. Apologies for this.

He shouldn’t be dropped imo. Dubravka was clearly an improvement when he signed, but I don’t remember him ever having as good a three months or so as Darlow has just had. Definitely looks an improved keeper.

I think that's probably fair but what happens if it's a normal Liverpool day for their strikers and 3 of their many chances go in and we lose 0-3? There's absolutely nothing else from that performance except the result to hang onto. There wasn't any attractive interplay to enjoy, because we barely had the ball because the manager hasn't the coaching or philosophy to make that happen. The chances we did create were individualism and set piece based. When the margins are that fine and you've only got heroic defending and goalkeeping keeping you from a heavy defeat, I don't get the positivity for the sake of it. It's a defeat on 9 out of 10 days. I dunno, maybe my glass is half empty I agree on the missed chances, though I think those often happen in good defensive displays against a much stronger team - often a bit of luck is involved and on another day maybe Wilson or Clark would have got on the scoresheet. To me as a team I like how we had some level of organisation at the back and composure on the ball. The heroics were more individual moments particularly from Darlow and Schar, but they were great to see, especially given what a different player Schar looked to before under Bruce. Good to see Matty play well in midfield.

Thought you’d fell out with him. Long covid mate. Still love big Steve.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to think both that Bruce is still terrible and for that result and performance to be pleasing. Sure we rode our luck, but forced a couple of good saves from them also and there were some excellent individual performances. Not going to pretend this was a tactical masterclass from Bruce or anything other than a terrible Liverpool performance, but it wasn’t simply the Bruce luck we’ve seen on plenty of other occasions.

Beat me to it! Some of our fans are off their heads for even thinking of comparing Rafa with this clueless clown never mind posting about it on social media! That was in relation to my comments on his style that I stated above were still a gamble in the Championship imo. We were often very frustrating at home against teams we should have easily beaten, which would have made promotion easier. I wasn’t comparing his style to Bruce myself. If people are saying there’s not much between them, then they’re probably not smart enough to understand or just wilfully ignorant. As I said most people don’t rate Bruce now and that guy on Facebook got destroyed in the comments. Aha - my comment wasn't aimed at you pal - it was at the ones on twitter who seem to think Bruce is a better manager! Ah fair play, I agree it’s crazy people seem to think he’s a better manager! Some people aren’t capable of or are unwilling to assess evidence properly sadly. I don’t think it has to be a comparison tbh. It shouldn’t be hard to see who is better, but both should be judged on their own merit. Shouldn’t need Rafa’s strong organisation to highlight Bruce’s incompetence when the stats speak for themselves!

Beat me to it! Some of our fans are off their heads for even thinking of comparing Rafa with this clueless clown never mind posting about it on social media! That was in relation to my comments on his style that I stated above were still a gamble in the Championship imo. We were often very frustrating at home against teams we should have easily beaten, which would have made promotion easier. I wasn’t comparing his style to Bruce myself. If people are saying there’s not much between them, then they’re probably not smart enough to understand or just wilfully ignorant. As I said most people don’t rate Bruce now and that guy on Facebook got destroyed in the comments.

I think it was a bit of a gamble though as we made hard work of it. I remember losing often at home and not looking certain of automatic promotion for a while, until we finished well and then Brighton choked at the end.

So much to love about Rafa, but so often in the Championship I thought we were underwhelming when he didn’t have lack of investment as an excuse. Interestingly finishing top 10 was remarkable the next season, though I still don’t buy the money comparisons with Bruce. Rafa had some cracking defensive/keeper deals and Rondon on loan. Bruce had spent £40m on Joelinton, but whatever Bruce has done wrong with him (plenty I’d guess), I think we can all agree he’s not a £40m player.

I remember playing cricket against him the summer before he made his debut and he was class. Wish he’d stuck with that now. There’s still a potential player in there - I think the Carrick comparisons weren’t silly in that spell under Rafa. In better teams he’ll also get chances to shoot more as he seems to have an impressive strike from what we’ve seen. Confidence looks shot to bits though sadly.

what the f*** is that I saw that and in fairness the original poster got slated in the comments. There is the odd exception but barely any fans seem to support Bruce now. I still don’t despise the bloke; I’m just ready for us to be taken over and for him to be swiftly shown the door. I know that’s asking for a lot still...