Steve Bruce has hit back at Dwight Gayle in a quite remarkable interview after the experienced striker made a number of bold claims about his former boss on a recent podcast.
Gayle, who scored 34 goals in 122 appearances for Newcastle between 2016 and 2022, played under now-Blackpool manager Bruce for the entirety of his one-and-a-half year spell as manager.
Earlier this week, Gayle made some eye-opening comments about Bruce on the Open Goal podcast, accusing him of “chucking a few of the boys under the bus” in a game against Manchester City.
He would also accuse Bruce of failing to offer tactical advice when he and teammate Matt Ritchie asked for it.
“He was OK,” Gayle said about Bruce. “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.
“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.”
“Me and Matt Ritchie were asking for tactical improvements for weeks… months,” Gayle added. “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’.”
A few days later – after Blackpool recorded a 2-0 win over fellow League One side Northampton on the road – Bruce was asked for his thoughts on Gayle’s comments.
As you can see from the footage below, he brought up Gayle’s failure to score against City before delivering a no-nonsense comment about his stature in the game.
“Is that the legendary Dwight Gayle, who missed the chance in the quarter-final against Manchester City? Is that the same Dwight Gayle? Interesting,” he told BBC Radio Lancashire.
“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. I’ll let other people make their minds up who are a bit more established than Dwight ever was.”
Here’s how fans on social media reacted to the interview.
One said: “Steve Bruce has an extremely high opinion of himself considering he boasts the second worst win % of all Premier League managers with over 200 games.”
A second wrote: Well said Steve. Unbelievably likeable, popular and shown great longevity – he knows what he’s doing,” while a third commented: “Shots fired.”
A fourth said: “So in Steve Bruce’s mind because Dwight Gayle missed a chance against Man City once we can’t trust his opinion.”
A fifth added: “Surely someone who has “only managed 1050 games” would have a bit more professionalism when being interviewed.”
Thoughts on Bruce’s response to Gayle? Let us know in the comments.
