The managerial moves came thick and fast yesterday in the Championship, with Steve McClaren heading back to Derby County and Steve Bruce returning to the second tier with Aston Villa after leaving Hull City over the summer, despite guiding them to the Premier League.
While the ex-England boss’ second coming at the iPro Stadium has stolen headlines for mainly negative reasons, Bruce heading to Villa Park has been welcomed by a large quantity of Villans, even though he has close links with their bitterest of rivals, Birmingham City.
Bruce knows what it takes to manage in the Championship – a notoriously unpredictable division – and appears to be the ‘head over heart’ decision the Midlands side should have made a few months ago when they instead opted for Champions League-winning ex-Chelsea coach, Roberto Di Matteo.
At the same time as these managerial changes, the England national team has also been in a period of alteration, with Gareth Southgate in as caretaker following Sam Allardyce’s exit. Veteran Football League gaffer Ian Holloway has told Sky Sports that he thinks the Three Lions should have moved for Bruce before he went to Villa:
“This is England’s loss, Aston Villa’s gain, massively, I’m disappointed Bruce didn’t get the England job.
“I think he’s a fantastic bloke, who has achieved so much in the game. He was the perfect candidate and would have slotted in there like a glove after the Sam Allardyce situation.
“I’ve got nothing against Gareth Southgate but he was doing a fine job with the U-21s – why change it?”
Holloway went on to claim that Bruce – who has four promotions on his CV – is the right man for Villa:
“It was always going to be a hard job and Roberto Di Matteo has taken the flak.
“Bruce will get them moving forward in a way that only he knows how to. He’s got more experience in that department than Di Matteo had, who had been working at a different type of level with a different remit.
“Bruce will assess where the strengths and weaknesses in that squad lie immediately because he’d have been watching their bad start.
“When I look at Aston Villa’s squad, it’s a bit of a mismatch of who is going to play where. Bruce will get them organised and get the best out of his players in a system that works.”
