More concerning claims from Steve Bruce - How on earth can he say this?

Another Monday morning, another sitting down to dissect and write about Newcastle United. God it’s a hard slog at times. It’s getting harder and harder to find positives, and indeed hope at the moment.

Now on the face of it, a draw against Wolves isn’t the end of the world. The manner of the performance and how inevitable it all is what is so spirit sapping.

For all his talk, Steve Bruce doesn’t seem to have a clue how to change things, and speaking to Matthew Raisbeck from BBC Newcastle, our head coach made more concerning comments:

“I was delighted with the way we’ve played in the first half - it’s, arguably, as good as we’ve played here.

"We needed exactly the same (in the second half) and to get the second goal. Unfortunately, we went far too deep and didn’t do enough with the ball.”

One criticism I’ve heard of Newcastle fans is that we dissect and jump on Bruce’s every word, but didn’t give Benitez the same scrutiny. I’m certainly guilty of that and I’m about to do it again, with good reason.

He isn’t wrong for the most part, but delighted? Honestly did any fan feel “delighted” with the first half? We couldn’t get the ball off them in the first 20 minutes and we created nothing, thankfully neither did Wolves with all their possession. We started to push forward a little more, scored and had a very good end to the first half.

Then the second half was absolutely woeful, but Bruce just seemed to stand there and accept it. Time and time again Wolves attacked down our left, it was so obvious that’s where they would find joy but lack of guidance and leadership from the touch line is just blindingly obvious. The substitutions? Anyone?

Perhaps I’m still too irked by his interview with Jeff Stelling about him deserving respect from us. You have to earn it Brucey, and so far you’re falling way short.