Titus Bramble has been a footballer long enough to know good things come to those who wait. He tells Stuart Rayner why Sunderland had to keep calm and carry on.
TITUS Bramble knows better than most the value of patience.
Bramble was playing Premier League football as a teenager and in Europe aged 20-year-old in a position – centre-back – where experience is more valuable than most.
He was still 20 when Newcastle United paid £5m for him. Little wonder, then, it took time to produce his best form at St James’ Park. Bramble was not only still growing as a player, but as a person when he left sleepy East Anglia for the bright lights.
Tonight he will be back, though not to Ipswich Town, but Norwich City. Steve Bruce will be returning too, to the ground where he did not so much grow up as slim down in preparation for scaling the heights of domestic football.
For Bruce the pressure will be off slightly after a first win of the season against Stoke City eight days earlier, at the sixth attempt. Managers have been shown the door for less. It happened to Bramble’s footballing mentor after failing to win the first four games of 2004-05.
“I think Newcastle’s downfall was Sir Bobby (Robson) leaving,” Bramble states. “It came from nowhere really, four games into the season, you make your signings, and then you sack the manager – it’s crazy.
“We’ve got ten new signings, so it’s not going to happen overnight. It takes a few weeks, a few months for everything to gel, so four games is crazy to think about sacking a manager.”
Nevertheless, some on the terraces were.
He added: “If you lose a couple of games the fans are going to get restless, but inside the club we know everybody is 100% behind the manager. It’s not great when that restlessness is around.”
After the madness of Freddie Shepherd’s Newcastle, Bramble can be confident panic will be slow to infiltrate the boardroom.
“It feels like a stable club,” he says. “That comes down from the top, which is really positive.
“Even last season, when we lost a lot of games at the back end, maybe a lot of clubs would be thinking, ‘Right, let’s get rid of the manager’, but it doesn’t do anything. It’s great we’ve got a good chairman (Niall Quinn) who knows the club inside out and who knows changing the manager wouldn’t do anything.”
That said, three points and four goals against the Potters were a relief.
“It was massive,” says Bramble. “Outside the club, everybody was thinking panic stations. We know we’ve got a great squad, a great manager and a great coaching staff. We knew when the first win came we’d end up getting plenty more.”
