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Opinion

Mikel Arteta totally loses the plot – These comments about Steve Bruce can never be forgotten

2 years ago
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Mikel Arteta arrives on Tyneside with a desperate recovery mission.

Avoiding defeat against Tottenham in midweek would have realistically guaranteed  Champions League football for Arsenal next season.

Whilst a win for the Gunners would have made it a mathematical certainty.

Neither thing happened and the 3-0 hammering means that Spurs are now only a point adrift of their fierce rivals, with Arsenal surely having to beat Newcastle United if they are still to get that fourth place in the Premier League.

Following the deserved defeat to Tottenham, Mikel Arteta lost the plot, blaming everybody apart from himself and his players, with the referee top of his blame list.

However, when it comes to truly losing the plot, nothing can surely top what the Gunners boss came out with seven months ago…

Mikel Arteta stunning the world of football on Thursday 21 October 2021.

The Arsenal manager making one of the most profound statements ever uttered by a Premier League manager.

The Spaniard declaring about Steve Bruce: “He’s one of the most important managers that England has had in the last 100 years.”

I think that was the point when you truly had to accept that all logic had gone out of the window, when it came to outsiders looking in on Steve Bruce and his sacking by the new Newcastle United owners.

Steve Bruce had been a disaster for Newcastle United, taking the patsy / stooge role previously occupied by the likes of Carver, Pardew, McClaren and JFK, so grateful to get a job that they never should have got and weren’t qualified to do, but willing to take the NUFC job on any conditions Mike Ashley imposed.

A disastrous summer had seen Newcastle United completely unprepared for the 2021/22 Premier League season, with players since, having admitted that under Steve Bruce the NUFC squad wasn’t even fit enough. Relegation looking a certainty as under Bruce we saw a demoralised group of players with no belief in the Head Coach, the first ten weeks of the season seeing not a single win before Steve Bruce was belatedly sacked.

Steve Bruce and his friends in the media then launched an overwhelming campaign trying to deflect from how hopeless Bruce had been, trying to make out that the Newcastle fans had treat Bruce in a way that was way beyond what any football manager had been subjected to. The reality was that actually, despite how useless he had been, Steve Bruce got almost zero abuse at any matches, instead, the now West Brom boss pointing to nonsense on social media that sadly pretty much any public figure is subjected to. An absolute disgrace that the Newcastle fanbase were hung out to dry like this, considering the incredible levels of abuse we have seen at clubs such as with Chelsea fans (with Rafa Benitez and any number of others managers), Liverpool fans (Roy Hodgson and others), Arsenal fans (Arsene Wenger and others), Man Utd fans (Solskjaer and countless others)…

As for Mikel Arteta, I would have loved to hear from him, where exactly Steve Bruce came in the pecking order, as ‘one of the most important managers that England has had in the last 100 years.’

As one of a top ten, where would Mikel Arteta place Steve Bruce amongst Sir Alf Ramsey, Sir Bobby Robson, Herbert Chapman, Brian Clough, Bob Paisley, Bill Nicholson, Tom Watson, Harry Catterick, Stan Cullis and so on?

Mikel Arteta must surely have been absolutely embarrassed when realising the nonsense he had came out with, in his entire managerial career Steve Bruce has never won anything and indeed hasn’t even led a club to finish top nine in the league. Never mind one of the greatest ever, Bruce isn’t even in the same league as JFK, Alan Pardew and Fat Sam!

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