Bruce – Two Up Top Is The Way Forward

Manager Steve Bruce has made a bold claim in today’s pre Nottingham Forest press conference…Aston Villa will now be more expansive in attack.

Speaking to the Official Site as he met with the media earlier today, Bruce made the bold claim on the back of now having the right personnel in place to play the way he wants to – 442 ala Barnsley.

Bruce stressed the options available to him when he took over didn’t lend themselves to that, but he’s now confident that we have the options to play in his favoured way.

‘I like two up top. I’ve always thought it was the way forward. For the last six months in particular, we haven’t done that. But I had to stop the trend of us getting beaten. I’ve had to send a team out that’s difficult to beat and try and stop the rut of poor results. It was about putting a bit of resilience back in there – that was the way forward.’

Bruce went on to say that fans would now see a shift from ‘don’t get beat’ to ‘go and win’ and I think I can speak for us all in saying about bloody time too as that has been a major bugbear in recent weeks with us being overly defensive and cautious, yet when we open up and go at teams we always look a lot better – even if admittedly it doesn’t always pay off.

At least it’s the right attitude though.

‘Now we have a squad capable of playing two up top, being a bit more expansive and trying to go and win games – rather than just staying in games. When I took over, it was all about staying in the division, never mind trying to get out of it. Hopefully now we’re in a position where we can mount a challenge.’

He went on to say.

‘After my first game in charge here, I thought ‘I have to instill here a discipline to make us difficult to beat’. We had been beaten too often – and easily beaten. We were maybe defensive but that`s the way I thought we had to be otherwise we were in serious trouble. That`s what we worked on for the best part of six months. How do we make sure we give nothing away? Have we got enough up top to go and get a few results to get us out of trouble? Now, with what we have, I think we have a side capable of mounting a challenge, which is vitally important.’

Acknowledging the criticism about being too cautious.

‘The one thing that`s been levelled at me is that I`m ultra-defensive. Every team I have got out of the division has played two up top. I didn`t think for long periods that I could play two up top here. I didn`t think we were strong enough in other areas. I now have, I believe, the players in situ to be able to go two up top. Getting the balance right is vital and stopping the defeats was uppermost in my mind at the start. Now I believe we have a squad capable of getting out of the division.’

Undoubtedly the return to some fitness of Jonathan Kodjia figures highly in that attitude switch, but the emergence of Keinan Davis in particular looks to have helped.

Now if we can get Scott Hogan firing as he did at Brentford on top of those two (clue to midfield – feed him don’t expect him to be Peter Crouch) we might just have a shot at turning this season around.