Former Newcastle United boss Steve Bruce has hit back at Dwight Gayle, who played under the defender-turned-manager on 45 different occasions between 2019 and 2021, after he claimed that his former boss once told his team, “I don’t do tactics”.
Currently at the helm of League One outfit Blackpool, Bruce enjoyed a 97-game stint at St James’ Park but was replaced by the more fruitful option, Eddie Howe, shortly after the club were taken over by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
In the northeast of England, Bruce – who is one of the highest-scoring defenders in football history – won 28 games, drew the same number and lost 41, while Gayle notched 34 goals in 122 appearances as he largely underwhelmed up top.
And recently, talking to the Open Goal podcast, Gayle – who now plies his trade north of the border for Hibernian – reflected on his time under Bruce’s stewardship and said: “He was OK. I felt that he didn’t spend enough time working on a lot of things with us.”
“Perhaps he was trying to go game by game rather than developing us as a team. I think we could’ve improved a lot of things,” the line-leader said. “I remember some of the boys got chucked into the Man City shift. We had a three-game week and the gaffer chucked some of the boys under the bus in terms of who had to play Man City away.”
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London-born Gayle, who has since played for English duo Stoke City and Derby County, then insisted that Bruce failed to offer tactical advice when he and teammate Matt Ritchie asked for some sort of guidance from the now 64-year-old. “Me and Matt Ritchie were asking for tacticial improvements for weeks, months.”
We came in at half-time and we were two or three down, and he was like, ‘Boys, you keep asking for tactics, I don’t do tactics; just put your boots on and work hard. [Against] Man City, that’s not good enough to be like, “Just run about!” I was just in shock. But yeah, that’s what he said.
Since, Bruce has launched a fiery defence by questioning his former centre-forward’s performance for the Magpies during their FA Cup quarter-final defeat to Manchester City in 2020 when Gayle squandered a gilt-edged chance for Bruce and Co.
So I’m led to believe, yeah. Is that the legendary Dwight Gwayle, who missed the chance in the quarter-final against Manchester City, is it? Is that the same Dwight Gayle? Ok, interesting.
“I’ve been around the block a long, long time. I’ve only managed 1,050 games but, according to Dwight, I don’t know what I’m doing. So, I’ll let other people make their minds up who are a bit more established than Dwight ever was.” Bruce told BBC Radio Lancashire.
Gayle’s miss that Bruce references was one that came at a perfect time for the Magpies – just when they were growing into proceedings. Nicolas Otamendi’s loose pass across the box was intercepted by Allan Saint-Maximin before he squared it perfectly to Gayle. On the cusp of the six-yard box, the striker skied his effort quite sensationally. You can watch it below.
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