Aston Villa exclusive: Former boss Steve Bruce addresses ‘obscene’ Championship reality

Aston Villa supporters have enjoyed some great moments since they were promoted back to the Premier League at the end of the 2018-19 season.

Villa soared up the Championship table and couldn’t be stopped in the play-offs. Jed Steer and current Villa striker Tammy Abraham were among the heroes in the semi-final tie against West Bromwich Albion before Wembley goals from Anwar El Ghazi and John McGinn put their team back in the Premier League.

A year earlier, Villa tasted defeat in the play-off final against Fulham. Manager Steve Bruce was sacked in October 2018 having been in charge at a truly miserable time for Villa supporters, something he points out when asked about his time at Villa Park.

‘Great history, great tradition, great supporters’

“For a club like that, it was on a decline. So the first thing I had to do was to stabilise us, to make sure that we weren’t going to get relegated out of the Championship,” Bruce tells AVillaFan and OLBG. “That sounds obscene for a club like Aston Villa, but that was the reality.

“We got to the playoff final and lost 1-0 to Fulham. Who knows what could have been? We were close. I had started to put a stamp on it.

“New owners come in and I understand that. New owners come into a football club then usually a new brush sweeps clean, is a saying of mine. And that’s what happened really.”

Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens effectively took over Villa in the summer of 2018 and oversaw the club’s rise from the second tier to the Champions League, masterminded in large part by Unai Emery and, in the early days, by Bruce’s successor Dean Smith.

“I’ve got nothing but admiration of what the owners have done for Villa. Again, they’re a different football club to when I was managing it. Always a very, very big club though with great history, great tradition, great supporters,” says Bruce.

“But I took over at a difficult time and I like to think I steadied the ship a little bit – just missed out on promotion which ultimately cost me my job.”

‘We couldn’t afford him, basically’

There is one player who links the three managers. Villa signed McGinn two months before Bruce’s dismissal and has evolved into a genuine legend, captaining the team in the biggest matches of their modern history.

He’s heralded as a bargain but even the modest fee that brought the Hibernian midfielder to the West Midlands looked as if it might be beyond the previous Villa incarnation.

“He’s arguably one of my better signings,” says Bruce. “We had to dig deep. We couldn’t afford him, basically. How mad is that? We probably didn’t have two million quid, so we scrimped and scraped and somehow managed to persuade him to join Aston Villa in the Championship, rather than go to Celtic, where his grandfather was the chairman, I believe, back in the day.

“So there were a lot of negotiations to do and persuade John to come. I’m delighted that he’s had a wonderful career and he’s kicked on to be the captain, especially now that they’re going for Champions League and winning trophies.

“It’s great to watch him. That’s the big satisfaction when you take people like him and Andy Robertson and Wilson Palacios. That’s when you look back on it and think, you like to help them along the way and how well they’ve done and you keep an eye on them.”

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