According to The Chronicle, Newcastle United manager Steve Bruce is safe in his post until the end of the season.
What’s the story?
While plenty of questions have been asked of the 60-year-old during what has been a fairly bleak campaign on Tyneside, the fact Bruce’s side now look on course to retain their status as a top-flight team and are a safe bet for your ComeOn bonus 2021 looks to have eased any pressure on him.
Though the report does say he was unlikely to have been sacked anyway, they also claim that is one at one point a ‘live debate’ presumably during the miserable run between December 16th and January 30th where they didn’t win a game.
Such debate, for now, looks to have been stopped given the recent turnaround in form.
Is it good news?
Well, it’d be hard to suggest Bruce can ever really turn it around in the eyes of the supporters who have called for his sacking. Frankly, it’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which the former Sunderland boss is widely accepted by swathes of the fanbase and, considering how his team have played at times, it’s easy to see why.
However, there have been green shoots of things changing of late. Perhaps one could attribute that to the arrival of Graeme Jones but, ultimately, something is now working, so the regime in place does deserve some credit.
That certainly isn’t to argue that Bruce is the man to take this club forward long-term but, for now, there doesn’t appear to be any real need to sack him.
The Verdict
It’s important to caveat the argument here.
There is no need to sack the manager at the moment given his side are ten points clear of the drop zone.
That does not mean supporters should be happy about the current state of the club (Alan Shearer recently described it as a ‘hollow shell’) but, for the moment, it seems unlikely Mike Ashley would want to splash out any cash to get rid of him when the pressing need to has somewhat alleviated.
At the very least, Newcastle have improved. In the current context of the club with survival surely the key to any takeover hopes, that’s all that really matters.
