Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Bruce - Page 2

It's very difficult to win a title.

I don't think you can manage 400 games in the Premier League, 550 in the Championship, play 980 times and not be a little bit organised.

We can all take criticism as long as it's constructive. When it's complete lies, that's when it's disappointing.

I am a Newcastle fan like everyone knows.

You have to keep that equilibrium - not getting too carried away or beating yourself up too badly. As a manager you have to be in the middle all the time. If you take water in, people look at you and say - 'look at the state he's in today.'

One of the hardest parts of management is trying to bring a club back after it's been relegated because there is a lot of doom and gloom around, especially among supporters.

From a playing or managing point of view relegation is a blot on your CV that you don't want, but you have to live with it and try to bounce back.

I was just too young to retire as a 52-year-old. I didn't want to be going out of football after loving it so much.

When you go to school in the north-east you have to be tough.

I had 235 games for Gillingham in the old Third Division. Everybody associates me with Man United and winning things but I had seven years at Gillingham and 3 at Norwich. One of those years we got relegated. Until I was 30, 31, I hadn't really won anything.

If you manage Newcastle, you have to deal with the consequences.

It's not always about money, we got Hull promoted with a collection of loans and waifs and strays.

I never thought I'd be in a position like I was at Aston Villa where people weren't going to get paid on a Friday. That's how bad it was. It looks great from the outside but we had huge financial problems for months.

At Sunderland I balanced the books and managed them to this position of 10th and 13th. My record stacks up.

All you can try to be is as honest as you possibly can.

That's what the Premier League is, that will never change. There will be periods when you're up and down.

No one hates someone spitting at someone more than I do and it is frowned upon in our country. It is a horrible, horrible thing to do.

I don't think I was a control freak. I just couldn't get my head around things. When I joined Sheffield United I was told I had £5m to spend, then when I went to see the chief executive he told me if I didn't raise £350,000 no one was getting paid.

My record is good with Birmingham and Wigan. Just study the facts.

I've got the utmost respect for Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham.

The one thing that's easy to do is go and sign players. What you've got to try and do is try and improve them, and get better.

I look at the England job. It's not always about being the greatest coach. You've got less than a week before most matches. So do the players need actual coaching, or do they need to be set up in a team structure that works, and then pointed in the right direction? Create spirit, take away the fear.

When you're 1-1 against Manchester United and you're trying to get the winner with five minutes to play, the fans play their part then and give you that little bit of adrenaline.

I don't go into management to be liked.

I'm always sad to see a manager go.

What people resent, in sport, is if you go out with a whimper.

I've been fortunate enough to have some big games as both a player and a manager.

To manage your country, there's no bigger job.

Call me old fashioned, but we're now holding umbrellas up as our players get off a plane. Do they need that? It's a few spots of rain. OK, they might get wet. Well, let them get wet. That's what happens when it rains.

In the dressing room there is nothing better than when a good player walks through the door and the guys say 'I'm glad he's come along.'

Without that real spectacle of a big, noisy St James' Park or Old Trafford or the Emirates, the certain beauty of watching a game of football even live on the telly is not the same as far as I'm concerned.

I've been fortunate enough to win the FA Cup as a player but it's taken me 15 years as a manager to get to a semi-final.

I was a little bit headstrong; when you're younger, you want to take on the world. At first you try to prove yourself to be the boss. I don't think I lose my temper as often as I used to now but, back then, I needed someone with grey hair, with experience, to help me, to tell me certain things didn't matter, didn't make a difference.

The reason you come to manage Newcastle is to be in front of 50-odd thousand every week, even if you might get a bit of stick along the way.

The North East is a tough, working-class area. Its people boast great humour. But for two days every year, when Newcastle and Sunderland play football, it's absolute chaos. And very nasty. It borders on tribal hatred.

If our players start to see coaching as a dead end, where is the next Ferguson, the next Clough or Shankly? It's sad. How will players see a pathway, how are they going to see a future if even the England job goes abroad?

A lot of people forget that I played for seven years in the lower divisions; it wasn't always 'this glittering career.' I had to wait a long time and even in the early days at Man U, for three years we didn't win anything.

I remember going 14 games at Man U without winning.

I'm delighted and incredibly proud to be appointed as head coach of Newcastle United.

I've never been involved with anyone who's set out to hurt people, to break legs. It is a bit of a dying art

I think we are all frightened a little bit when a new broom starts to sweep.

In football, you can never say anything is certain. The benchmark is 38-40 points. That has always been the case. That will never change.

He’s a fantastic talent and the complete footballer, probably the most coveted in the Premiership. It’s a privilege for the rest of us to be on the same field. If i could have anything i wanted for Christmas, i’d take Thierry Henry

There was never any question about Scholesy's quality as a footballer. He was known as the little ginger magician in the youth team. Some reckon he's the best United player of the modern era, and there's a case for saying that. You don't hear him blowing his own trumpet, though - he just gets on with his job. He's the real deal.

They've kicked our backsides, we've got to lick our wounds...

No disrespect to the country. It's a wonderful place, the where's he gone again?