Aston Villa boss Steve Bruce has revealed that he does not know if club owner Tony Xia is a patient man. After being relegated form the Premier League at the end of the 2015/16 season, the Villains have been in poor form, winning just four out of their last 42 away matches in the Premiership and Championship.
They have also started this season on a less than impressive note after drawing their first match of the season against Hull and then being comprehensively outplayed and beaten 3-0 by Cardiff during the weekend.
Bruce knows that he will have to launch a promotion push this season and said about the state of the club when he joined, “It was a mess here. For a big club like this, with the history and tradition, it was hovering around relegation and it was inevitable it was going to happen.
“I could say the same about Sunderland. If you are down and around the bottom for three or four years, then it becomes inevitable you fall out of it.
“It all starts at the top. If you get direction, it filters down to the groundsman, everyone. Thankfully, I think we have some stability. The owner is desperate to do well. He calls the shots. There isn’t a big board of directors.
“I don’t know if he’s a patient man. I guess I’ll find out. However, he understood, when buying it, that it needed repair.”
