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Tony Cascarino defends Steve Bruce, says his Newcastle United project ‘work in progress’

3 years ago
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Tony Cascarino has been talking about the situation at Newcastle United.

In particular, the unhappiness of the Newcastle fans and the position of Steve Bruce.

Tony Cascarino coming to the defence of the NUFC Head Coach and claims that it is a case of a ‘work in progress’ for Steve Bruce, as he allegedly looks for a way to make Newcastle United more ‘exciting’ to watch whilst also picking up results.

Newcastle United fans won’t recognise the ‘work in progress’ reference because as far as they are concerned, it isn’t working under Steve Bruce and there certainly isn’t any signs of progress.

Steve Bruce promised to always play on the ‘front foot’ with his Newcastle team when he arrived in July 2019, yet 16 months later in November 2020, if he had his team defending any deeper, they would be in the car park.

Newcastle United have regressed rapidly both in terms of results and entertainment, these past 11 months seeing only seven Premier League victories and pretty much zero excitement / entertainment.

In Rafa’s final 28 PL games, Newcastle had the eighth best form in the Premier League, in his last 16 matches the fifth best form and fifth highest number of goals.

If you look at the stats below, comparing Rafa’s overall final season with Steve Bruce’s current 2020/21 one, you can see just how wrong things are going. This despite Steve Bruce allowed a £100m+ net spend these past 16 months, mainly on attacking players.

Tony Cascarino speaking to Talksport and asked whether Newcastle fans were justified in being unhappy with the football they are watching and the perceived lack of ambition:

“I agree, to a certain level…

“Even I think that Steve Bruce will consider he wants more and how does he find more from his team?

“It is a work in progress to making them more exciting but he had a lot of problems when he was at Aston Villa.

“A lot of Villa fans will echo what you are saying about the way Villa played and they were cautious in their approach.

“They needed to be something more…and Aston Villa are similar to Newcastle in terms of history.

“Jackie Milburn and the Kevin Keegan era, unbelievable attacking teams.

“That is what Steve [Bruce] has the challenge of trying to build for the fans of his football club, plus being very effective.”

Our thanks for the table below to NUFC Substack, the table showing the performance of Steve Bruce this (2020/21) season, compared to Rafa Benitez in 2018/19:

The stats don’t lie!

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