Amanda Staveley comments on Steve Bruce – People are mistaking them for what they really are | OneFootball

Amanda Staveley has been talking about Steve Bruce.

The comments made during an interview on Thursday (7 March 2024).

Amanda Staveley speaking in Jeddah about a number of things, however, with her Steve Bruce comments I believe people are mistaking them for what really are, which I will explain under these quotes.

Amanda Staveley speaking (7 March 2024) at the Bloomberg Power Players event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, talking about when the Newcastle United takeover happened in October 2021:

“We are are patient and we were persistent [when trying to buy Newcastle United] but there needed to be dramatic change, as the club had been run in a very different format and we had very few commercial revenues.

“We had a team that was ageing, a coach that basically didn’t even want to come to work, a fanbase that was very angry and we had to take this incredible club and inject it with some life.

“We have incredible partners and they work incredibly hard to make sure that we are all very focused on the business plan. You have to be.

“You have to make sure that you make sensible decisions in terms of the transfer window, keep to your FFP constraints and try to do things that innovate and push outside the box, because that’s the only way we’re going to engage our fanbase and grow the club.

“We have an incredible coach (now!).

“We have an incredible team.

“Bringing Eddie Howe in and an executive team was really important.

“It is difficult, it is a very competitive market in terms of players and rules around that, so you have to be very focused.”

The Amanda Staveley comment on Steve Bruce that he was ‘…a coach that basically didn’t even want to come to work’ is the one that has attracted the most attention.

From what I have seen, journalists and indeed fans as well, appear to be taking this as Amanda Staveley supposedly referring to Steve Bruce no longer wanting to work at Newcastle United after the takeover.

Steve Bruce of course shamelessly refused to resign, despite Newcastle looking certainties for relegation under him. Supposedly a Newcastle United fan, Steve Bruce instead clinging on until the new owners were forced to sack him, getting a widely reported £8m pay-off as reward for doing such an appalling job.

What I believe Amanda Staveley was referring to, is something entirely different.

If you go back to May 2020, it was Danny Rose who first alerted us to this.

Taking to the Lockdown Tactics Podcast, the then Newcastle United loan player talked about the training regime he had been used to for the past five or six years at Tottenham, saying that he and his Spurs teammates would ‘…get one day off if you are lucky and that’s it, you’re grafting for the rest of the week.’

Dann Rose then comparing it to what he had experienced since his move to Tyneside, declaring ‘So now I’m at Newcastle [with Steve Bruce], you are getting two or three days off a week if you win. So I’m thinking what’s going on here then? It’s a shock to the system.’

Rose going on to make clear he had never anything like it at any other club, for a manager to give themselves and the players so many days off, instead of working at the training ground ahead of matches.

So when Amanda Staveley talks of Steve Bruce as ‘…a coach that basically didn’t even want to come to work’, I think she is referring to how little time he spent at work, instead of preparing the team for matches.

This was backed up after Steve Bruce got his pay-off, as we then had a procession of players admitting in interviews, that a big reason as to why Newcastle had started the 2021/22 season (nine games without a win under Steve Bruce) in such shocking form, was due to them not being fit enough compared to rival teams.

The very opening game was a perfect illustration of this, as Newcastle led 2-1 at the break, only to then look increasingly knackered in the second half as a far fitter looking West Ham went on to score three goals and win 4-2 at St James’ Park, whilst NUFC didn’t have a single effort on goal after the break.

Amazing how quickly time flies, the shambles of Mike Ashley, Steve Bruce and Lee Charnley now consigned to history although it feels like far less than two years and five months since that nightmare ended, with now a committed and professional set-up in place.