Steve Bruce: This is the best team Sunderland have ever had, but I'd like to manage England one day
Steve Bruce has never sent an email but if he did break down this interview into a series of short, sharp messages, they might read something like this.
Email to the Football Association: 'I'd like the England job at some point, possibly even after Fabio Capello's gone, but it's probably best I tell you this first. That bit about me being the best defender never to have played for England. Well, I was asked to play for England once but I knocked them back.'
Email to Sunderland: 'I'd only consider the England job if you were happy for the FA to talk to me. I actually love it here so much I'd like to extend my contract.'
Email to Simon Jordan: 'I know I've touched on this before but when I left Crystal Palace all those years ago I really did let you down. No, really, I did.'
And a group email to his players: 'With wealth comes responsibility, lads. The game is in danger of losing touch with the fans.'
But Bruce doesn't do emails and he doesn't really do text messages, iPhones or computers either.
'I just keep a diary,' he says. 'And if I want to communicate with someone I pick up the phone. My old Nokia usually. And I really have never sent an email. You might think I'm old school and I accept that I am, but I prefer to talk to people.'
He will be 50 at the end of this month and it is an older, wiser Bruce who shares his thoughts and his philosophies as well as the reason why the job he has now gives him more pleasure, even, than captaining Manchester United.
'I tell my players they have the best job in the world,' he says. 'But I get more satisfaction from preparing a team that then wins on a Saturday than I ever did from the success I enjoyed as a player.
'If I was coming to the end of my playing career now, I'm not sure I'd go into management. With all the coaching badges and everything, it can take five or six years to learn your trade. And I think the average survival time in the lower leagues is about 15 months. You'd have to ask yourself if it's worth it.
'But I'm here because I love the game. Because I wanted to stay involved. I probably could have retired after I finished playing but I'm someone who likes to go to work every day. Likes to get up and do something.
And this is great. Winning a cup final as a player is fantastic but, for me, the highs are better now. Just seeing my team win.'
After 12 years in management, he has developed something of a routine that enables him to enjoy it and cope with the stresses of the Barclays Premier League. A routine that involves two dogs, a working man's club in Wallsend and a pint on a Sunday. Like he says, he's old school. A man of simple tastes.
With echoes of Brian Clough, he likes his two boxer dogs to accompany him to work.
'I've had a kennel built for them here,' he says. 'They're struggling a bit at the moment because they have both done their cruciates. One was chasing a ball and one was chasing a pigeon. But walking them is my way of switching off. I take them along the coast or the big wildlife reserve over the back here. I can just disappear for a while.'
Now he's back in his native North East he can disappear for a drink with his dad, Joe, too.
'I've seen more of my mum and dad and my family in the last 18 months than I had in the 30 years prior to that,' he says.
'And I try to go and have a pint with my dad in the working man's club in Wallsend.
'My dad was a fitter and he's been drinking there all his life. I would go there when I was a kid. It's proper Newcastle country but most fair-minded people accept I'm the manager of Sunderland.
'The first question I asked the people at this club was whether they had a problem with where I was born. Where I grew up as a kid. But I don't get any problems where my dad drinks because, at the end of the day, people round here like to see their own doing well. That said, I haven't been in since the derby.'
He regards that game at Newcastle at the end of October, when his team were hammered 5-1, as the nadir of his managerial career.
'Aye, the worst result of my life,' he says.
But it is how he and his young side have responded that is so impressive. First came a win against Stoke, then a draw at Tottenham and the win, two weeks after the nightmare of St James', he now considers the finest of his managerial career. A 3-0 success at Chelsea that has helped Sunderland climb to seventh in the table.
'We've only lost one of the seven we've played since,' he says.
Bruce says that when it came to dealing with the defeat at Newcastle, he remained calm with his players.
'I might have been shouting and screaming 10 years ago,' he says. 'But I had a meeting with the players and I simply reminded them that we had let everyone down. I didn't need to say anything else.
'I made a conscious effort to build a young squad here. At Fulham last week I think we had the youngest team in the league, with an average age of about 23. But when you have a team like that you can get those kind of results. At Newcastle we just didn't handle the occasion. The players got caught up in it.
'I remember playing in my first semi-final, against Oldham. I was 30 but the emotion of the thing got the better of me. It was boiling hot, we played poorly and got our backsides kicked.'
In the most recent derby week he did not just lose a football match. He lost two of his dearest friends. John Benson was the guy who persuaded him to return to football after his dismissal at Huddersfield, while Bill 'Buster' Collins was perhaps his greatest influence.
Bruce has to pause for a second. 'They died within days of each other,' he says.
'Benno the day before the derby and Buster a couple of days after.
'I had a rough start in management. Six chief executives at Sheffield United and then the sacking at Huddersfield. After that I became a bit of a recluse. I was doing up my house, working as a labourer for the builders. I wouldn't go to games because I was worried managers would think I was after their job. At one stage I agreed to take the Tranmere job but then the wife reminded me that, in Liverpool, I never would have been I never would have been accepted.
'Then Benno called me. He was the general manager at Wigan and Bruce Rioch had left. They had eight games left that season and told me to come and have a crack.
'It was great and during that time John gave the best advice I've ever had. I used to think I had to be responsible for everything. If the food in the canteen was OK. If the tables were clean. John told me to put all my energy into winning on a Saturday.
'He'd been working with us here for a month when we lost him. Cruel. And then Buster died. He was 90 but he worked for Gillingham for what must have been 50 years. He was youth team coach when I went there as a kid and he brought me up really. He taught me values. Right and wrong. I did find management hard to start with.
'After Wigan I worked with Simon Jordan at Crystal Palace. We're good friends now but 10 years ago he was volatile and so was I. I would spit my dummy out. I remember us arguing over Steve Vickers. And rather than sitting down responsibly and discussing it, we had a blazing row.
'I wanted to sign him and I eventually did - at Birmingham. He was key to us getting promoted. But I wish I handled it differently with Simon. I walked out and went to Birmingham and that wasn't right.
'I let him down. We were flying. Top of the league. But we were fighting like cat and dog and suddenly it was all over.'
Bruce often struggles to apply logic to the things he sees in football. Like the fact that the Newcastle manager who beat him 5-1 has since been sacked.
'I can't get my head round that,' he says.
'And it's the same with Sam (Allardyce) this week. Blackburn were bottom of the league when he took over. He kept them up, has got something like £40million in and last season they were 10th.
'Managers are falling victim to the people who buy our clubs. These people need to realise these clubs have been around for more than a hundred years. It's not a toy.
'It's also why I worry that, if we're not careful, we are going to alienate ourselves from those people. This is still a working class game and all the wealth, this pop star ethos, just ain't right. I do my best to make sure my players have some manners and treat people the right way. The way they expect to be treated. We have to clean up the image of footballers.'
His message is one that would sit well with an England manager, a role he would one day like to occupy.
'If England came knocking and Sunderland were OK with it, of course you'd have to think about having a crack at it,' he says.
'Even to be linked with it is something I wouldn't have dreamed of in the past. And if it's going to be an Englishman there aren't many of us. Only five in the Premier League with Sam gone. If, in 18 months, it's up for grabs and I'm still doing well here it's got to be the pinnacle. To be the manager of your country, even though you know what it entails, would be amazing. How could anyone turn it down? The biggest single disappointment for me was not playing for England.
'At United, when it was international week, I'd be the only one left. Everyone else would be away and I never really came to terms with why.'
But then he admits something. 'The closest I got was when Terry Venables rang me,' he says. ' It was 1994 and there was a Mickey Mouse friendly against Nigeria and I politely said: "Terry, thanks but no thanks". I think he was just going to give me a cap. A recognition of what I'd done.
'I knocked it back, aye. I didn't want to just have one cap that was given to me out of sympathy. I was still United captain but I'd been United captain for years and never even got in the squad.
'I was nearly 34 and the game was at Wembley. If it had been a qualifier, of course I would have played. If the country had actually needed me. But it wasn't.'
He considers himself unfortunate that his best years coincided with Graham Taylor's tenure as England manager.
'When Graham got the job I knew I was going to struggle,' he says.
'He took the England B team one time in Malta (1987) and we won 3-0. But reading out the team he said "Bruce - and by the way you're captain. I have to say that's not my decision. I don't think you're captain material. It was Bobby's decision". Some team talk!
But he clearly didn't fancy me as a player. But because I missed out as a player I'd fancy the manager's job. As an Englishman, nothing would make me prouder.'
Not that Bruce is making any such plans. He just wants to focus on a Sunderland team that is producing England players.
'I think this is the best squad Sunderland's ever had,' he says.
'We've got England players, international players. People who've played at World Cups.
'I want us to become another Everton or an Aston Villa; enjoy big European nights at the Stadium of Light. That has to be the dream for us here. Can you imagine it?
'I signed a three-year contract when I came here and if they see fit and want to extend it, I would sit down and willingly discuss that with them. From top to bottom, this is a great club.'
With a wise old head at the helm.
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