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Latest Steve Bruce remarks are even more embarrassing about Andy Carroll

5 years ago
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Against some pretty strong competition, the most annoying thing I am finding about Steve Bruce, are his comments about Andy Carroll.

It feels like not a day goes by when the NUFC head coach isn’t talking about the striker.

If I didn’t know better, I would think we had signed Ronaldo and Messi, with a large chunk of Alan Shearer at his best thrown in as well.

Andy Carroll was a local lad whose career was only just getting started when Mike Ashley immediately sold him once he started scoring goals in the Premier League, that was a few weeks after he turned 22.

Who knows what could have happened if he hadn’t been sold off BUT he was and he isn’t a Newcastle legend/Geordie hero. He is somebody who started 24 Premier League games for Newcastle before leaving. I don’t blame him for leaving but when it comes to listing players and their contribution to Newcastle United, he would be a long way behind the likes of Ryan Taylor and James Perch.

With his latest nonsense on Friday, Steve Bruce says ‘Can he be a help in the dressing room? Can he help the young people that we have got? Of the pitfalls that surround it…What’s it like to play for this club. The demands of this club. You know, it is only a small little city. You are certainly under the scrutiny, the eyes of everybody.’

If any young players want advice about being a local lad and playing for Newcastle, why would you walk past Paul Dummett to get to Andy Carroll? Dummett has lived the dream and apart from a successful loan spell at St Mirren has spent pretty much his entire life at Newcastle United and played well over 200 times.

As for ability, Steve Bruce goes off on one: ‘Certainly of his type, I don’t think there’s been anybody better in the last eight to ten years when he has been playing.’

What kind of type is that? Somebody who doesn’t play most of the time and has only scored 39 Premier League goals in the eight and a half years since leaving Newcastle – only three PL goals in the last two and a half years.

I really hope he does well but if we get anything out of Andy Carroll, surely it is a bonus.

The way Steve Bruce has gone on, it feels to me like he has built Carroll up as some kind of saviour of our chances this season, the message coming over as once he is fit Newcastle will be more than ok.

At best it is unrealistic and at worst it is setting us all up, including Andy Carroll himself, for a massive fall.

The odds are very much on him playing very few minutes on the pitch and injury striking yet again.If/when that happens and Newcastle are still struggling, I can just imagine then Steve Bruce playing the ‘what a nightmare’ card, how unlucky that this has happened to our greatest hope. Instead of the reality of it being so so predictable and Carroll a player who Newcastle should never have been relying on.

A couple of goals off the bench this season would be at the very outer limits of my Andy Carroll hopes/expectations.

God only knows what Steve Bruce is expecting…

Steve Bruce ahead of the Brighton match:

“We all know that if Andy stays fit then he’s a wonderful, wonderful centre forward.

“Certainly of his type, I don’t think there’s been anybody better in the last eight to ten years when he has been playing.

“A fit Andy Carroll is going to be huge and great for us going forward.

“I think I said it a month ago, it is not young Andy Carroll anymore, it is an experienced Andy Carroll.

“If he can pass on…I had a couple of conversations when we signed him…

“Can he be a help in the dressing room?

“Can he help the young people that we have got?

“Of the pitfalls that surround it…

“What’s it like to play for this club.

“The demands of this club.

“You know, it is only a small little city.

“You are certainly under the scrutiny, the eyes of everybody.

“So in that respect he has been terrific. We have seen an upturn in training, just because he is out there too. He has given everybody a lift at the right time.

“I have seen Joelinton play for Hoffenheim against Manchester City, towards the left. He has done that throughout his career.

“You know, a lot of them play with three forwards these days, so I have got no problems if I have to play the two of them (Carroll and Joelinton), or even Saint Allan (Allan Saint-Maximin) in there as well. The three of them, that is not a problem, that is what they are here for.”

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