Ron Gourlay already has plan set for future of Steve Bruce as West Brom manager
Ron Gourlay is planning to keep Steve Bruce as West Brom manager until at least next season despite the club’s form, according to Chris Lepkowski.
After a pretty abject 3-2 defeat in the derby against Birmingham City on Wednesday (14 September) the Baggies are sitting 20th in the Championship table and promotion hopes are looking a long way away.
That result, after an unbeaten run that contained an abundance of draws, has changed the outlook of the start to the season and put the former Newcastle boss under real pressure, but according to what Lepkowski has heard that won’t matter.
Writing on his personal Twitter account Friday he said: “A few I know, independent to each other, have spoken to RG recently. The messaging was very clear: Bruce stays this season and next.
“They want him to have 2 summer windows at least. If that’s the case – and wasn’t lip service – it’ll need a prolonged run of bad form to shift that”.
Bleak
If that is the case there is some logic to it from a planning perspective as it is so often said that managers have to be given time to build.
But it won’t reassure many of the fans who are fearing this stay in the second tier will be significantly longer than the last couple.
Granted, Bruce came in last season and had to rescue a side that the wheels had come off of as the Valerien Ismael imploded into bad results and unhappy players, but Albion were inconsistent at best under him for the rest of the year and the push for the playoffs that a managerial change was supposed to spark never really materialised.
There wasn’t much money to spend in the summer to strengthen the squad, and while some of the free agent pick-ups like Jed Wallace and John Swift have been very encouraging the debacle that saw two deadline day loan acquisitions fall through was the exact opposite.
The Baggies are a very difficult team to gauge currently, since the unbeaten run before Wednesday suggested a side that were playing well but were a goal-scorer away from being successful, and Bruce can still point to having Daryl Dike at his disposal for a grand total of 12 minutes as mitigation on that front.
But after matches were postponed at the weekend, to come back and play the way the team did in a night-game local derby in front of the Hawthorns crowd was pretty dismal.
Bruce couldn’t prevent Kyle Bartley dropping the kind of clangers that he did but he is ultimately in charge of this team and has to take responsibility for it.
If Gourlay has given him the security that has been rumoured then that loss won’t be enough to change things, but a couple more like that any time soon might do.
In other West Brom news, Bartley is one of nine players currently in line to leave the club.