Melon Donkey
I am a little bit perplexed
If you actually read what I wrote, the word "might" occurs frequently. No I'm not prepared to assume that Bruce is in the right about this and McCormack is the villain. Fact is nobody knows. I haven't the faintest why you drag coaching staff, medical staff and player welfare into this; are you party to knowledge none of the rest of us have?
There's a load of assumptions about Ross which are based on very little evidence and completely one sided. I'm not being one-sided in the other direction by querying them.
I'm going on the fact that under RDM, when Kodjia had barely arrived and hadn't got into his scoring boots, McCormack was our most effective forward. Bruce ditches him pretty quickly, along with Elphick and others. Bruce also a bit later decides to out him with Macgate (which McCormack maintains was a distortion of the truth) which effectively puts him beyond the pale. Evidence indeed of a massive gulf between manager and player, but not much more. McCormack was willing to go out on loan so wants to play (and had a successful spell in Australia).
Given the fact we have a crap manager who seems to take a wholly subjective view of players, I'm not prepared to ditch the notion that Bruce is at least as much to blame in this. That's not the same as saying that it's all his fault. I do however have a strong suspicion that he carries some of the blame.
Erm ... I did read what you wrote thanks.
And you did use the word 'might'. However, only in the sense that Bruce did not want to use him and Fat boy might have wanted to play. To balance that you could have said... but..Bruce might have wanted to play him but Fat boy didn't want to play. So you wrote something that seemed unbalanced against Bruce and came across as Fat boy not shouldering any blame in this.
And I mentioned the medical staff etc... to make the point that in order to get Fat boy to play everyone, and not just Bruce (as seems to be the common opinion) plays a part. This is top level football not Sunday league where the manager does everything. If Fat boy has physical, mental, addictive problems the club as a whole has a duty to help him . And they would have tried. He would have got all the help he wanted, but at the end of the day he had to help himself. He hasn't because he would be playing. Because, i say again, the club cannot out of choice write off 12 million . So it's in their interest to sort it out positively. Why would anyone, including Bruce, not want a 20 goal a season striker to start firing ?.
No matter what people I say, until I hear evidence to the contrary, my opinion on this is that it has ultimately become the players issue and problem .