Isaac Hayden has been speaking to The Beautiful Game Podcast about life at Newcastle, where his relationship with Steve Bruce was discussed.
What’s the story?
Well, Hayden was particularly honest when speaking about Bruce.
The £2.5m man revealed that he and the 61-year-old had “a few ding dongs” during their time together at Newcastle.
Hayden said: “We had a few ding dongs during our time. You get these sort of things. To be fair to him, he’s a typical man’s man, you could have an argument, but you shake hands at the end and that’s it. Done.”
In truth, that doesn’t surprise us in the slightest.
Hayden is a straight talker, whereas Bruce isn’t exactly one to mince his words either – the pair were bound to come to blows at some point.
Nevertheless, they still maintained a fine working relationship, despite Newcastle’s struggles out on the pitch.
After all, tensions will always be close to spilling over when defeats are coming thick and fast.
In total, Hayden has played 93 games under Bruce for both Hull and Newcastle, in which he’s scored three goals and provided three assists.
Steve Bruce didn’t just annoy Isaac Hayden at Newcastle
By the sounds of it, Bruce got on the wrong side of a few of his players while in charge of the Magpies.
According to the Daily Mail, Matt Ritchie and Bruce clashed at Little Benton, which led to the Scotland international calling his manager a “coward”.
The same report states that Ritchie’s teammates backed him, whereas Karl Darlow also confronted the ex-Sunderland manager.
Clearly, Bruce is not the easiest to get along with, if reports are true.
It was interesting to hear Hayden add to the stories of what Bruce is like behind closed doors.
Hopefully, we don’t hear more of the same while Eddie Howe holds the reins.
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