Steve Bruce: Useless? Unfairly treated? - The truth might just be somewhere in the middle…

Well, thank God that is over. For everybody’s sake.

The past two years on Tyneside under Steve Bruce have been toxic and challenging. At times, I have felt borderline disinterested in our club.

Many others felt the same, which is why 10,000 season tickets were willingly forfeited upon the news of his appointment, back in July 2019.

Bruce walked through the door at St James’ Park and immediately faced an uphill battle. The club had just lost Ayoze Perez and Salomon Rondon - our two top scorers the year before - as well as Rafa Benitez, a man who held every Toon fans’ hope for the future hinging on his every move.

Plus, the issue of Bruce himself, a former Sunderland manager who had fierce words to say about Newcastle while in charge of our bitter rivals. He was always going to prove an unpopular choice for the hot seat. Nobody wanted him, and rightly so.

Bruce’s comments often fuelled the fire when it came to the hostilities between himself and the Toon Army during his time here.

A year ago, he labelled a section of fans as “keyboard warriors” for simply questioning his management at the club. Hardly fair, considering fans were forced to stay away from the stadium to vent their anger in person due to coronavirus restrictions. And the fact that some of our performances were abhorrently dreadful, and deservedly criticised.

However, yesterday, in an interview with The Telegraph, Bruce claimed that some fans refused to ever give him a chance at St James’ Park.

He said: “To never really feel wanted, to feel that people wanted me to fail, that I was useless, a fat waste of space, a stupid, tactically inept cabbage-head or whatever. And it was from day one.

“When we were doing ok results wise, it was ‘yeah but the style of football is rubbish’ or I was just ‘lucky’. It was ridiculous and persistent, even when the results were good.”

It’s hard not to see his point of view. He never received credit for his recruitment policy which, in fairness, was pretty solid. Bruce banging the door down to sign Callum Wilson and helping persuade Joe Willock to the North East are two things that get overlooked by our supporters.

He was able to - occasionally - manage us to some fantastic performances, notably away to Bournemouth, Everton and Leicester.

Also, in my living memory as a Newcastle fan, I have never seen a manager endure so much vitriol from large sections of our supporters.

Some of the comments and criticism felt over the top, to the point where I actually saw people say that they “hated” Bruce. One post, where I rated his time at Newcastle 5/10, saying he did the bare minimum as a manager by keeping us up, received backlash.

“He is the worst manager we have ever had,” “-5, deserves no credit, useless ****”

Worse than John Carver? Joe Kinnear? Steve McClaren? Give over.

Bruce should never have been our manager in the first place, but he certainly wasn’t the worst we’ve had, either.

In fact, that is probably the best compliment I could pay to his time on Tyneside. I thought Bruce would relegate us as soon as he came in, but we stayed up - twice. A stark indictment of just how low the bar was set under Mike Ashley.

But the mirage of abuse should never get in the way of balanced, justified criticism.

Bruce has oversaw a Newcastle side that has won just seven in our last 38 games, a run of relegation form stretching over two campaigns that sees us sitting 19th in the Premier League and without a win all season.

News of how little the players train while Bruce jets off on holiday reeks of unprofessionalism and should never be accepted at a Premier League club.

Any other club would have sacked him ages ago. I bet Bruce, too, probably wishes he had left in the summer, as he would have been able to leave with his head somewhat held high.

The harsh reality is that, while we may be the richest club in world football, a relegation dogfight is also on our hands and to have the best chance of survival - Bruce simply had to go.

The overwhelming majority of Newcastle fans, myself included, are relieved he has finally been given his marching orders.

The feeling will undoubtedly be mutual, with Bruce perhaps the most relieved out of the lot of us that the decision has been made.

I do wish him all the best for the future. People forget this is a man who has achieved promotion to the top flight four times - a joint-record alongside Neil Warnock.

There will be a Championship club out there who will be the perfect fit for Bruce, but he simply isn’t good enough to cut it in the Premier League.

Onwards and upwards for Newcastle United. We get to banish another page of the Mike Ashley era to the history books, while Bruce can bask on a Portuguese beach with nobody on his case and an £8million pay-out in his pocket…