At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Steve Bruce was walking the dog close to his home in central Newcastle. Maggie is a four-year-old boxer, “although she acts like she’s four months,” Bruce says and she was running through the trees, dodging runners, sniffing, playing and prancing. “She’s friendly, don’t worry, won’t bite,” he would shout to fellow walkers, just an ordinary bloke in Barbour, trackie bottoms and trainers.
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This is an out-of-context Steve Bruce, which sounds like one of those parody Twitter accounts, but nobody expects to bump into the head coach of Newcastle United, however local he may be, when they are jogging off a hangover or taking their kid to the swings, and you could see recognition spread slowly across faces. Most people would smile, some patted Maggie and some offered him good luck and good wishes. “Cheers, thanks,” he says.
Bruce is not precious, in or out of football, and if you have a dog, then you walk it. Yet this does not quite fit with the image we have of the Premier League, of managers and players being aloof, nor of him being embattled or encircled. He is here, just here, “not everybody’s cup of tea,” as he frequently acknowledges, but in the middle of his city and open about it. He is not hiding away. He is not sheepish about having this job. The old bugger is proud.
A man stops in front of him, looking vaguely stupefied. “Steve?” he asks, although it is not a question which requires a response. The two of them knew each other back in the day; played together, what, 45 years ago? Maggie is a few yards away, mesmerised — and clearly terrified — by what looks like a chihuahua. “Wow,” Bruce says about his old acquaintance and team-mate as he strolls on. “That kind of stuff happens all the time.”
Maggie, it turns out, is a regular presence at Newcastle’s training ground, padding the corridors behind Bruce, but they do this walk “every morning now”. “Some of the staff use the gym before work — holding off the years — but I like doing this. Maybe I’m just that age! Is that sad? On game day, you always have a ritual and routine and this gives me time to think. Have you prepared enough? Have you picked the right team? Have you done the right things?”
Eight hours later, St James’ Park has some answers. Newcastle have come from behind to beat Bournemouth 2-1, a slow-burn sort of victory marshalled by their slow-burn sort of manager. Their start was awful, too passive and sloppy, but they got a grip of themselves and the match, replied and recovered. The second half was feisty enough for the old ground to come alive, pockets of booming noise splitting the air.
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Nobody can paint this a club at ease — it is difficult to hail turning points when you spend most of your existence haring up blind alleys — and a crowd 8,000 below capacity cemented one dispiriting theme of the season, of love drifting away, but nor are things as bad as some expected after a summer of chaos. With another international break upon us and 12 league games gone, Newcastle are 11th in the table with 15 points.
Want to know what Bruce thinks of that, how he rates it? He gives himself a mark of “six out of 10,” which is reflective of his own character — he can say too much in press conferences sometimes but he is not a bullsh*tter — and Newcastle’s capacity for disaster. No wars have been won. Not yet. “When I see us sitting where we are… we’ve had a decent start,” he tells The Athletic. “It’s OK, but that’s all it is. There’s still a long way to go.”
Is it time to reevaluate Bruce? Or, to pose that question in a different, less divisive way, has he earned some respite? Rafa Benitez has gone, but the manager’s position remains the battleground where Mike Ashley’s running of the club is fought and because the Spaniard questioned and tested Newcastle’s hierarchy, Bruce must somehow be aligned with it, complicit. Because Benitez was exceptional, Bruce must be a muppet and a puppet.
Benitez held Newcastle together; players improved, fans liked themselves and their club a bit more and the mirage of ambition endured. Without him, what would they stand for? As the empty seats suggest, it does not feel like hope, more like the expectation of dismay, of a return to normal service. In the Ashley era that has tended to mean traipsing along at the bottom of the table, corrosive decisions, apathy and disenchantment.
Explaining all this is not easy and neither is Newcastle, but this is the context behind Bruce’s arrival. He could not be more different to Benitez in terms of temperament, a master of detail and precision replaced by a man of feel, who will happily rabbit on and gossip and never overwhelm you with science. When Newcastle started the season loosely, losing at home to Arsenal and then thrashed 3-1 at Norwich, it calcified those differences.
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There was the spike of victory away to Tottenham Hotspur, the trough of Newcastle’s traditional early exit from the League Cup. There was a 0-0 draw with Brighton, when Isaac Hayden came to the touchline and said, matter of fact, “it’s not working,” and then there was their 5-0 loss at Leicester City. Hayden was sent off that day, but Newcastle were stripped back to the bone, exposed and untethered. Bruce called it a “debacle”.
Since then, there has been a recalibration. Bruce reverted to three at the back, the system favoured by Benitez and which best suits a squad featuring six decent centre-halves. The notion of attacking football was shelved. Improbably, they beat Manchester United — “that’s been the best bit, definitely,” Bruce says — lost narrowly to Chelsea, drew 1-1 with Wolves. At that point, relegation was breathing on their faces.
Newcastle are familiar with slog, but successive victories over West Ham and now Bournemouth have altered the feeling. In east London (and against a poor side), there was some dash and panache and scoring more than once for the first time this season. On Saturday, there was more. So what if their strikers are allergic to goals when their defenders are such gluttons and if that may not be sustainable, then at least the chances are now coming. There were 20 of them on Saturday.
Does our thinking change? Does Bruce merit a fresh look? Can he be accepted for who he is rather than be rejected because of who he is not? “Well, look, all I can do really is… do y’know, the vast majority of people I meet, in the park or wherever it is — all of them, in fact — have said, ‘best of luck, you’ve got a difficult job, but keep going’,” he says. “I’ve never had anything that isn’t positive from the people I bump into.
“I’m just delighted that I’ve seen the stadium rock a couple of times in the last month now, against Manchester United and again [on Saturday]. I think the crowd got behind the team because they enjoyed the spirit the team showed. That’s how it should be. Bournemouth were out of sight in the first 25 minutes. They were really excellent. To turn it around the way the players did… I’m delighted. I hope people have enjoyed what they’ve seen.”
It is often said of Bruce that he enjoys a layer of support from his ‘mates’ in the media. If this is true, it reflects his accessibility, his willingness to engage. Strange as it may sound, he quite enjoys talking to journalists but for some, that will always represent collusion or cosiness, particularly under such a toxic owner. What is remarked upon less often is that some of his treatment has been brutal.
Was the rush to judgment too quick? Bruce considers that. He is leaning on a wall a few yards away from the tunnel at St James’. Pictures of Newcastle’s Edwardian heroes, Andy Aitken, Colin Veitch and Jackie Rutherford are beside him. This is not a story of vindication or redemption. It is just a win. “The only way you can answer it and for people to then maybe change their opinion is by winning, like the players did today,” he says.
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“All this stuff about me being clueless, that I can’t do this or that, that I don’t know how to take a warm-up, it’s insulting. But look, to do the job, you’ve got to have tough skin. I’ve got that. The experience I’ve had over 20 years has put me in good stead. I was offered this job in 2004 and I’d have been following Sir Bobby Robson. I was young. I might not have had the toughness to see it through. I do now.”
Newcastle are in the stodge of mid-table, but Bruce and his team have been buffeted by huge turbulence to get there. “It’s been hard work,” he says. “It’s hard. People are questioning you. You have to try and take a step back from that and say, ‘it is what it is’. But I want the club to move forward, I want what’s best for the club and at the end of the day, I’ve been chosen to manage it. I’m a Geordie. How lucky am I? Not many have had the privilege to manage this great club.
“I regretted it for years when I stayed at Birmingham City all that time ago and I never thought it would come around again. When I say I’m delighted to be here, it isn’t just words. It means the world to me.
“The longer we go on, the better we’ll get, I’m sure of that. We’ve been back in the division for a couple of years and we’ve been relegated twice in in the last 10, so it hasn’t been easy for Newcastle. The aim has got to be get the club properly established in the Premier League. The longer you’re in it, the more you can improve, the better players and squad you assemble. To get this opportunity, great. I’ll say it again: I’m delighted.”
If there are some people he will never win over, then so be it. All he can do is keep trying and keep winning. Since Leicester, they have done it three times in five matches, losing just once. “Sometimes, you need that hard wake-up call to bring you back up,” DeAndre Yedlin, the wing-back, tells The Athletic. “Since then, we’ve been very good. That’s a good sign, to show that we can and have reacted.”
“It was embarrassing,” Bruce says, “although we’ve seen since then that Leicester are a very, very, very good side and we were down to 10 men against them for a long period. That’s one thing. But it was the manner of how we lost. It was way too easy for them. That’s when you earn your money, that’s when you draw on your experience, and think about how you get a response. We needed one, that’s for sure.
“I’d changed the system, but it was too early for that. We had a very short pre-season together. They were used to playing in a certain way, so let them back into their comfort zone, if that’s what it needs. From there, it’s about how we can be a bit more of a threat. Against Bournemouth, we had 20 attempts on goal. A few weeks ago, we were lucky if we got one so gradually, you’re putting a little bit of a stamp on it.
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“I want us to be defensively right, because you have to be, but I also want us to entertain and to be a little bit up and at ’em, where the crowd can say they’ve enjoyed watching their team rather than just hanging on, because I think that’s the way forward.”
On Saturday night, a friend sends a text. She is still a season-ticket holder at Newcastle, albeit an increasingly reluctant one. “That felt better,” she says. “Actual atmosphere. Some atmosphere, anyway. I felt feelings. I haven’t felt feelings this season. It’s a start.” Perhaps, as Bruce says, it is simply a six out of 10 start, but it is something, not nothing and he is going nowhere. And when he is walking Maggie tomorrow morning, near his home, in Newcastle, he has every right to look up.
(Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
