Steve Bruce left Newcastle United players stunned by going on holiday during the October international break while they turned up to train before his sacking, as per the Daily Mail.
The Toon parted with Bruce on Wednesday after just over two-years and 97 games at the St James’ Park helm. He leaves Tyneside with the club 19th in the Premier League table and without a win this season. And a team he frustrated with supposedly inadequate standards.
Bruce angered some Newcastle players with the excessive number of days he let them take off during his tenure. During the first 11-days of the Magpies’ new era under the Saudi-led consortium, United only trained on four.
Additionally, some Newcastle players believed Bruce gave them so many days off was so he could travel home to Cheshire. With the standards the 60-year-old set at Darsley Park their ‘biggest complaint’ from his 27-months in charge.
But their anger intensified further during the last international break when Bruce chose to go on holiday than take training. Players arrived at Benton expecting their now-former boss to be there, only to find he had flown to Portugal.
And to make matters worse, Newcastle players arrived on the following Monday to prepare to face Tottenham Hotspur, only for Bruce not to be there again as his return flight back did not touch down until the afternoon.
Newcastle player returns to former club due to Bruce’s training standards
The Daily Mail add that at least one Newcastle player even regularly returned to his former side for fitness and nutritional work due to Bruce’s standards for training. While others that initially welcomed his more laid-back approach also now yearn for Rafa Benitez’s structure.
Benitez instilled a far stricter standard for discipline and attention to detail during his three full seasons at the helm. A vastly contrasting style to Bruce, who Danny Rose admitted last year stunned him while on loan from Tottenham with how many days off he allowed, even during international breaks, as seems to have been the case over his final weeks in charge.
“Now I’m at Newcastle, you’re getting two or three-days off a week if you win,” Rose told The Lockdown Tactics. “So, I’m thinking: ‘What’s going on here then?’ It’s a shock to the system. We’d only get one day off if we were lucky under [Mauricio Pochettino].
“Even in international breaks, he’d see the ones who would go away as having a holiday because training isn’t as hard with your national team. We’ve been programmed a certain way in the last five or six-years and going to Newcastle, it’s different.”
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