Steve Bruce

Salut!’s week: Wigan woes, Bruce goes, Wolves foes

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Image: Mrs Logic


Monsieur Salut looks back on a momentous week for all who care about Sunderland AFC …

As I began to write this review of the week, we were a day into the post-Bruce era of Sunderland AFC, three days from an important game at Molineux.

By the time I finished the first draft (these are after thoughts), we were just waiting for official word that Martin ONeill had Been appointed in Steve Bruce’s place. And MoN knows perfectly well what the Sunderland faithful will be hoping he can pull off.

And what a week it has been.

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Do they mean us? Arsenal, Manchester United, Spurs bosses on Bruce

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New Feet and jeepImage: Psiaki

Years ago, but some months after the changeover from typewriters to computers, a dopey newsdesk man where I then worked surprised colleagues by asking: “Tell me again. How is it that you log on?”

The poor soul was ridiculed. But I quite like dinosaurs.

Perhaps I was alone in warming to Steve Bruce on reading that he barely knew how to send an e-mail until quite recently, and looked completely blank when asked whether the fitness of his Egyptian signing Elmohamady would be affected by fasting during Ramadan. The reporter persisted: “Or is Elmohamady a Coptic Christian rather than a Muslim then?” And Bruce – who might more pertinently have been asked on what footballing grounds Elmo had been bought – looked blanker skill.

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Soapbox on life after Steve Bruce: what happens now?

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Pete Sixsmith mulls over the two most-mentioned candidates for the managerial seat left vacant by Steve Bruce’s dismissal …


So, the inevitable has happened and Steve Bruce has left the club. I was in no doubt after Saturday that he was as close as close could be to the sack; when it didn’t come on Monday, I thought he had been thrown a lifeline, but once again, I was wrong.

The owner has done the correct thing as there was little possibility of Bruce retrieving his relationship with the crowd. Three lengthy periods of turgid football and poor results, interspersed with the odd sparkling display, had done for him and it was better to put this horse out of its misery now.

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Official: Bruce Out – dismissed in Sunderland’s ‘best interests’

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So Steve Bruce has gone, fired today as the inevitable casualty of his team’s abject failure to get results to match Sunderland AFC’s spending and the supporters’ reasonable expectations. It is not a great day for SAFC, which remains for now in a mess. Salut! Sunderland finally and reluctantly came off the fence after the Wigan debacle and acknowledged the need for change. We had promised to reserve judgement until the end of November; our deadline, the last of the month’s games, passed without trace or hope of improvement.

Now Ellis Short has taken the required action. Or part of it. We wanted the club to have a replacement ready, not run the risk of a leaderless chasm. That was a tall order and no one appears to be lined up to take charge with immediate effect, unless Short has a trick up his sleeve and it is merely a case of dotting Is and crossing Ts. We’ll be watching and praying …

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Soapbox: Bruce sees Nottingham Forest put another cup beyond us

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In an ideal world, bright SAFC publicity people would have told Pete Sixsmith: “Get yourself along to the Reserves; someone’s due a hammering.” Instead, the 7-0 demolition of Scunthorpe was out of bounds to Salut! Sunderland and practically everyone else. So Pete joined Steve Bruce and others at an FA Youth Cup game – and saw us beaten…


Away from the brouhaha surrounding the continued employment of Steve Bruce and the sadness surrounding the tragic demise of Gary Speed, there has been some football played.

In the afternoon, the reserves demolished Scunthorpe United 7-0 at the Academy (but we’re not allowed in to watch) with Ryan Noble getting a hat trick in four minutes. Pity he couldn’t have done that against Fulham. He must be in line for a place on Sunday and if on the bench, and will with any luck be given longer than last time on the field.

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Birflatt Boy: end the agony, Mr Short

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One of Monsieur Salut’s regrets is that although certain readers have taken a strongly pro-Bruce – or anti-kneejerk – line none has recently accepted the open invitation to put such thoughts into a full-sized posting. Yet there’s no shortage of hostile comment, as the latest Birflatt Boy offering demonstrates …

Let’s not beat about the bush on this issue.

The overwhelming majority of Sunderland fans not only want him gone after the debacle of losing at home to Wigan. Not only do the fans want him gone, they expected him to be gone already.

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Steve Bruce: why change shouldn’t wait for Wolves and Blackburn

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For most proper supporters of Sunderland, or indeed any other club, the commitment is unconditional. We may be scattered around the world, and the team/s we follow may experience varying fortunes, but we broadly want the same thing, week after week: success at whatever level we happen to be playing.

Younger Sunderland fans have known only the Premier League and upper end of the division below. The codgers have seen the old Third Division for one season and been close enough to another dose. Our allegiance has survived intact, and would do so again in the event of yet another relegation.

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The Robson Report: Bruce makes Leeds and 1973 seem centuries ago

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Steve Bruce looked a broken man on Match of the Day. Some of the abuse lobbed at him, Salut! Sunderland believes, was unacceptable, but it had hit home. To a large degree, of course, he is the author of his present misfortune. Jeremy Robson, hardly a born again convert to the Bruce Out cause, discusses this latest calamitous era of Sunderland’s managerial history …

For followers of this fine club of ours there has been a sorry history of underachievement apart from the two seventh placed finishes under Peter Reid and the solitary FA Cup win in 1973. I watched it again last night and for the very first time experienced the realisation that this was a long time ago.

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Salut!’s week: Bali, Brucey, Bolshie – and words to warm hearts

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The Bali idyll is over

M Salut flew back to Heathrow from Bali yesterday, having been well fuelled by Air Malaysia throughout the 7,810-mile slog. Blame that (the fuelling) or the jetlag for any aberrations in this latest backward glance, for the busy or technology-defeated reader of Salut! Sunderland, at our recent coverage of …

What has been going on around these parts with M Salut’s back turned?

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