Welcome to the latest instalment of It Is What It Is, the sister column to Adam Hurrey’s Football Cliches podcast, a parallel mission into the heart of the tiny things in football you never thought really mattered… until you were offered a closer look.
A brief(ish) history of Steve Bruce being perceived as not knowing what he’s doing, 2007-2022
It was — at least in the rigid world of official club social media — an unprecedented sight. But fans of Expressionist cinema (and who isn’t?) knew instantly what they were looking at; this was a textbook use of the Dutch tilt, “one of many cinematic techniques often used to portray psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed”. It was also, as another observer put it, “reminiscent of the angle used inside villains’ premises in the original Batman TV series.”
Whatever the case, it was a strangely voyeuristic image to accompany the Club Statement: Steve Bruce, which has become an integral part of English football over the past 15 year.
All the usual ingredients were there: the carefully lawyered language (“parted company”), the confirmation that Bruce’s loyal backroom staff were also out of a job (again), the mandatory “placing on record” of vague “thanks” for unexpanded-upon “efforts”, the immediate naming of an emergency trio of caretakers (which always includes someone — in this case James Morrison — who feels a) too young and b) too attacking-midfieldery to be an assistant caretaker manager), precisely one unnecessarily capped-up word (“Manager”) and the closing, word-count-padding information that the club, would you believe, have begun the process of hiring a replacement.
