Five Newcastle nadirs under Bruce before latest cup shambles…

“We haven’t lost on the night,” said Steve Bruce after Newcastle lost to Burnley on penalties, exiting the Carabao Cup at the first hurdle. The defeat represented the latest in a long line of Newcastle nadirs under Bruce. Here are five for starters…

Brighton 3-0 Newcastle (March 2021)
We didn’t think Bruce would survive this one. The local media didn’t think he should survive it. At any other club, he almost certainly would not have.

Bruce took his side to Brighton for what was billed as a relegation six-pointer. The Seagulls had been wretched at home and couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo when it came to scoring goals. But Graham Potter’s men swept the Magpies aside, which perhaps should not have come as a huge shock since the Seagulls were a better team with a more tactically adept manager.

But the absence of anything resembling fight should have been enough to see Bruce off. It was hardly a shambles in isolation. But defeat at Brighton made it two wins from 18 Premier League games.

With an international break following the misery at Brighton, after which Ryan Fraser admitted “the mood is the lowest it has ever been,”, and nine games of the season left, it seemed the perfect time to make a change and the consensus was it almost didn’t matter who came in. But Mike Ashley stood firm and, the way he will see it, was rewarded with survival. Which is all that really matters.

From March: F365 Says: Steve Bruce can’t survive new Newcastle nadir

Sheffield United 1-0 Newcastle (January 2021)
The sight of Newcastle arriving at Bramall Lane must have felt like manna from heaven for a Sheffield United side winless in the Premier League to that point – a run that stretched for 20 miserable matches.

The team-sheet, too, must have been a huge boon for Chris Wilder. Bruce went to the bottom side and played five at the back with a disjointed midfield and Callum Wilson ploughing a lone furrow up front. Then, just before the break, Fraser earned himself the kind of dismissal with two bookings in three minutes that makes you wonder whether he just fancied doing half a shift.

Billy Sharp’s penalty crowned a miserable month for the Magpies, during which they picked up two points from 18 available while exiting both domestic cups.

“We were absolutely sh*te,” admitted Bruce. “Frigging hopeless. The gloves are off now and we’ll do it my way,” he added. Begging the question: whose way had Newcastle been following for the previous 18 months?

Brentford 1-0 Newcastle (December 2020)
One of those cup exits came at the hand of Championship side Brentford in the Carabao Cup. Newcastle went to west London as favourites to reach a cup semi-final, raising faint hopes that Bruce could be the man to guide the Toon to their first silverware in over half a century. But, entirely predictably, Newcastle f***ed it.

Despite naming a strong side while their opposition rested some key players, the Magpies failed to match the Bees for intensity or desire. ‘Jonjo Shelvey plodded around in the middle – and he was supposed to be captain,’ read one of the many damning lines from the Evening Chronicle‘s match report.

Bruce ended the match with Wilson, Joelinton, Dwight Gayle and Andy Carroll all on the pitch, but a leveller never looked likely. Upon the final whistle, the manager knew what was coming.

“You have to accept the criticism which is fully justified. We shouldn’t be getting beaten in the quarter-finals of the cup with the opportunity that we had to get to a semi-final for the first time in 45 years. “We were too slow in possession. We didn’t run forward enough or cause them enough problems in possession, especially with the attacking players we had on the pitch.”

But Bruce remained defiant: “Progress was there for everyone to see. We got to a quarter-final. We all want to see better results than today and I understand their disappointment because there is no-one more disappointed than I am. I am a resilient so-and-so so I have to accept what is coming my way.”

Carabao Cup winners (Aubameyang) and losers (Newcastle)

Leicester 2-4 Newcastle (May 2021)
Why, you might ask, is Newcastle’s best performance of last season featuring in this list? The Magpies went to Leicester and dominated the Foxes, blowing away Brendan Rodgers’ Champions League hopefuls with a devastating counter-attacking display. The victory secured Newcastle’s Premier League status at the end of a run of improved form.

Here was an opportunity for Bruce to build some bridges. Instead, he poured petrol over the few still standing and tossed a lit match over his shoulder with an interview on talkSPORT just a couple of days later:

“Here is the big thing. Newcastle in the last 14 or 15 years have been in the bottom half of the Premier League.

“We would all love to see Newcastle United being back to signing the Alan Shearers of this world for world record fees but that just isn’t going to happen. “It is difficult managing the expectation that is obviously still there.”

For Bruce, one of the Geordie brethren as he never tires of reminding us, to throw around a lazy accusation that has dogged Newcastle fans for years reeked of self-preservation. Newcastle fans don’t ask for world superstars, or anything wildly unreasonable. Just a team that offers even the illusion of competitiveness. For Bruce to wilfully misunderstand the demands of the fanbase, a collection he claims to belong to, spoiled what should have been a rare bright moment in a dark season.

Newcastle 1-1 Wolves (February 2021)
The game itself wasn’t one of the low points of Bruce’s tenure but the fall-out from it certainly was.

Newcastle drew with Wolves after the visitors claimed a late equaliser when the Magpies failed to reorganise quickly enough after a substitution. Matt Richie entered the fray but the winger failed to pass on the necessary information about a tactical reshuffle when play restarted quicker than he perhaps had anticipated. The breakdown in communication allowed Wolves to break and Ruben Neves to stroll into the box to head home an equaliser while Newcastle players looked around in confusion.

Bruce fingered Ritchie in his post-match interview for his part in the situation, which did not go down well with the winger. According to the Daily Mail, Ritchie rang Bruce immediately to address the public criticism, but the manager insisted on sorting the matter at training three days later.

By the time Bruce called for Ritchie to head to his office, the player had lost interest in talking and labelled his boss ‘a coward’. That prompted Bruce to leave the comfort of his desk to confront Ritchie. A wonderfully petty exchange was detailed here.

The outcome: Ritchie apologised and Newcastle banned the journalist, Craig Hope, for doing his job while Bruce bemoaned the leak as ‘bordering on treason’.