On this day in 2011, notorious Mag Steve Bruce was relieved of his duties as manager of Sunderland AFC.
Bruce has somehow made a career out of managing the club rivals of a club he's managed previously. But at this time he hadn’t done that on Tyne & Wear yet, he was just a Mag in charge of Sunderland. Despite the baggage of being an obvious Geordie, a native of Wallsend, as one man famously rambled, he had actually done a great job at Wigan. Wigan, who we know all too well from experience in recent years, were once in the Premier League just like us. Unlike us, they were far exceeding expectations by being there. Bruce had stabilised them and had a keen eye for recruitment working within a tight budget.
Naturally, he wanted to demonstrate this transfer acumen and when he came in he made several changes to the squad. Some of his signings were really good to be fair to him. He brought in Lee Cattermole, Darren Bent, Stephane Sessegnon, Simon Mignolet and others. Not all of his signings were great though, some were poor. For example Conor Wickham…
We finished the first season under Bruce in 10th, which looking back, appears to be a massive achievement. Looking back you might ask, where did it go wrong? Surely we should've pushed for Europe. Alas, it wasn't to be. It's easy to become nostalgic for Bruce's team in his first season, what with Gyan, Welbeck, and Bent up front and Frazier Campbell providing depth. Our best attack in years. But, things fell apart...
Fresh off the back of our top half finish you would think we’d start the season well like we did in the previous two seasons but that wasn’t the case. We had lost Bent, and Welbeck went back to United. He loaned out one of our best players in Asamoah Gyan which didn’t help, although the player was the main instigator in that move. After a torrid run of five wins, seven draws and 16 losses in his last 28 games he was rightfully sacked. He claimed he was dismissed for not being accepted but at the time the majority of the fans were on his side. He even tried to claim he was sacked for being a Mag. All he did was put us on the list of clubs that he’s left with a sour taste on the tongue.
Since his time on Wearside, the anthropomorphic pie crust somehow wormed his way into his boyhood club after a string of fairly average managerial gigs. He wasn’t appreciated on Tyneside and was shipped out the door as soon as a Saudi takeover was on. After joining the Mags it meant he had managed both sides of three rivals (Sheffield United & Sheffield Wednesday, Birmingham & Aston Villa and then us and them). The epitome of a snake- sometimes in football there are things you don’t do for any amount of money.
Any early promise faded away and when your football is dour, you're overweight, you look like a figure a child has described to you from a nightmare and, crucially, you're a Geordie in charge of Sunderland Association Football Club, these factors will come back to haunt you on the terraces when performances inevitably go to the dogs.
