Bye Brucie.

They’ll miss the man. They won’t miss the manager. Steve Bruce is a fine fellow. Good company. A good old-fashioned football man. But recently, his football hasn’t been good and that’s what matters in the end. History may eventually be kind to him, because he didn’t do a bad job as Sunderland Manager. But it was time to go.

It’s the break-up you remember at the end of any relationship and this break-up got nasty. But after a while you'll remember the good times and there were good times. There were stirring performances against Premier League heavyweights, drama in the transfer market and a top ten finish.

One day you’ll think back to the start of the relationship and ask yourself why it began in the first place. Then you'll realise love has seldom crossed such boundaries. To put a Geordie in charge of Sunderland is to play with fire. That sort of thing worked for Bob Stokoe. It doesn't work for everyone. Certainly if the Geordie in charge of Sunderland keeps getting beaten by Newcastle United. And especially if the Geordie in charge of Sunderland ends up having to watch Newcastle United disappearing over the horizon.

But as the man said, he couldn't change where he was born, and the tribal dance really wasn't the problem in the end. Never mind the lyrics to the song after Wigan’s winning goal. It wouldn’t have been sung in the first place if it wasn’t for the football. “Geordie” was just another adjective adding another layer of insult. But the sheer force of the reaction was the point of no return. The relationship between fans and manager broke down completely that day and there was no realistic hope of recovery. Those were the worst of times and they are raw, recent memories.

So context is difficult. But whether by accident or design, Steve Bruce did a very important job for Sunderland. He steadied the ship. Bruce represents phase two of the Niall Quinn revival project. Phase One was about shocking the club back to life. Roy Keane did that, but his dark passenger travelled with him and the Irishman’s volatile personality blew up in Sunderland’s face. Sbragia was a footnote to Keane, and after that they needed someone reliable. Bruce was an excellent choice in that respect. He delivered finishing positions of 13th and 10th in the premier league and, despite the odd scary month, his Sunderland side never really got sucked into relegation battles.

Of course that wasn’t really the idea. The idea was that Steve Bruce was a manager ready to move to the next level, Sunderland were a club ready to move to the next level and the two would compliment each other perfectly. But it turns out Steve Bruce wasn’t ready to move to the next level. It now looks like mid-table in the premier league is his level, as his previous record suggested.

But while it hasn’t worked out in the end for Steve Bruce, Niall Quinn, or Ellis Short, it hasn’t been a disaster for Sunderland. They’ve had the shock, they’ve had the steady, maybe it’s logical that someone else is required to make the next step.

So where did it all go wrong ? Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct answer and the biggest single factor in Sunderland’s decline and Steve Bruce’s downfall was the sale of Darren Bent. Of course it was. Bruce had a 20-goal a season man, he lost him and he never replaced him. Bent's a wonderful player for any manager, because he guarantees goals and papers over cracks. Remove a player like that from a team and the cracks start to appear. In this case the cracks widened alarmingly.

The circumstances of the sale ultimately don’t matter. Whether it was the size of the bid, the greed or the unhappiness of the player, or simply the transient nature of modern football, the result was the same. Sunderland lost their prized asset and they lost the ability to paper over the cracks.

Asamoah Gyan didn't solve the problem. In hindsight, The African Superstar, with his bling and his music and the twinkle in his eye, was a bad fit for Sunderland. A very expensive bad fit. He was signed originally to play alongside Bent. Then he became the obvious man to inherit the goalscoring burden. But Gyan didn't really succeed in either role and appeared less and less interested in any of it as the weeks and months progressed.

And there's the rub, neither Bent's departure nor Gyan's ridiculous loan move to the Emirates Dog and Duck were directly Steve Bruce's fault, but he had to handle the consequences. He failed to do that and he really should have known Sir Alex wouldn't let Danny Welbeck out to play again.

He did try to deal with the goalscoring problem of course. In fact he tried to deal with every problem at Sunderland in roughly the same way. He went out and bought a new team.

This is the massive contradiction of the Bruce era. Mr Reliable, Mr Steady, chose to run his team in an almost constant state of instability. The grass was always greener on the other side of the transfer window. Coaching and long term planning never seemed to come into it.

That's where it all fell down really. At some point this week, Ellis Short will have asked himself if he could see a long term strategy and if he believed in it. He either couldn't see it or he no longer believed in it.

A good old-fashioned football man like Bruce will understand this, because results are all that matters in the end. They haven't been good enough this season. They haven't been good enough this year. So never mind the latest expensive summer rebuild, it was Steve Bruce's team, Steve Bruce's tactics, Steve Bruce's responsibility and time waits for no man. It stopped working a long time ago and there was no true sign of recovery. When all you can do is ask for more time, it usually means your time is up.

But Steve Bruce IS a good man. He tried his best and, as he kept telling us in recent months, he did make Sunderland the tenth best club in England last season. So once the nasty break-up is forgotten, try and remember him fondly. Choose your favourite Brucie catchphrase if you like. Whether it's "That's for sure", or "quite remarkable". Of course the irony is, in the end, he just wasn't quite remarkable enough. As I said, they'll miss the man. They won't miss the manager.