· March 21 2025, 14:30
**We're sure it does happen, but it's hard to imagine the current crop of Newcastle United players getting into any training ground flare-ups as the group all seems to close and all focused on the task at hand.**
However, when you put 25 super-competitive people together tempers are bound to rise, so we're sure that even Eddie Howe's lads have had their moments.
Back in the days of Rafa Benitez, the general mood around the club was okay, but far from what it is now but also not as low as the Steve Bruce days.
However, Rafa had some issues to control on the training pitch with Dwight Gayle telling the Open Goal podcast he had regular run-ins with Matt Ritchie.
We can't say we were shocked to hear that Matt Ritchie was a nightmare in training
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You just have to take a look at Ritchie in action to see that he's probably not the person you want to get on the bad side of. Dwight Gayle clearly wasn't scared of the Gordon Ramsay clone, though, as he shared stories of regular dust-ups with the Portsmouth player.
> “Yeah, me and Matt used to have so many fights all the time. All the time. Not me and him, we did have one, but he would fight with everyone, he was so chirpy, he would push it and push it and push it.“He’s a great professional and he’s overachieved because of how hard he worked.“What happened was the ball was bouncing around and he said ‘lift him’ to Ciaran Clark, and we started arguing and grabbing each other and whatever. Rafa said to us to both go in, because Rafa hated it.
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> “But it came back around, and he tried smashing me, so I just grabbed him to the floor and he’s trying to grab my legs and stuff.”
Dwight Gayle and Matt Ritchie linked up well on the pitch
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At least Gayle and Ritchie kept it away from the pitch, unlike Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer, who famously came to blows during a game.
Indeed, the pair linked up well on the pitch, so maybe that little bit of needle on the training ground actually paid off in the end.
We wonder who else Ritchie would wind up so much that they had to retaliate. It's probably a lengthy list if we're being honest.