Bruce slams critics after draw

Steve Bruce vowed to prove his critics wrong as Sunderland came from two goals down to draw with West Brom at the Stadium of Light.

The Black Cats had a nightmare start as they conceded twice in the first five minutes but their response pleased Bruce with goals from Nicklas Bendtner and Ahmed Elmohamady earning a point.

However, Bruce does remain confused as to why he’s under pressure after guiding the club to their third best finish in more than half a century.

He told reporters: “I honestly thought come on the team, we had a horrible start and let’s see what they are all about.”

“The one thing I won’t do is shy away from it, I’ve been given stick all my life. It just makes the resolve even bigger with me.”

“I’ll prove people wrong, I don’t know why I have to, I’ll just remind you all that Sunderland were 10th last year.”

“That was their third best finish for 55 years. It’s not exactly like the club’s winning the Champions League year in, year out.”

“So we’ve finished 10th last year and all I can hear about is last year’s run. Well we must have had some good run sometime.”

“I can understand the frustration because we’ve made a lot of new signings and the expectation now because we’ve made 10 new signings we’ve let 10 players go so it’s been a huge turnaround.”

“With that you need a little bit of stability and time. Unfortunately you don’t seem to get it now.”

“I could have easily stayed at Wigan, (where there’s) no expectations but I wanted to come and have the challenge of this and it’s certainly learnt me a lot but I’m determined as ever to see it through.

“If there are any doubters I’ll prove them wrong, which is what I’ve always tried to do.”

“I thought this is going to test them. I found out what some of them are made of because it was the ultimate test let’s be honest. I thought they were terrific.”

“To be 2-0 down is bad enough, (we conceded) two bad goals, but we scored two really good goals.”

Bruce also explained his decision to take captain Lee Cattermole off before the end of the game, as he believed the midfielder was close to being sent off.

He believes Cattermole is targeted by referees and opposing teams for his robust style of play.

“Lee Cattermole made a foul … and it’s always a yellow card. He’s trying his best to try and play the game the way everyone wants it to be played. In my years he would have been in everyone’s team because everybody had four or five of them.”

“You can’t make a tackle now and it wasn’t a yellow card. Then everybody is looking for him to make the next one so they can send him off, (I took him off) to protect him and the team. The last thing we wanted to be doing was (play with) 10 men after the efforts they had put in.”