Bruce rocked by ‘bizarre’ 15 minutes

STEVE BRUCE says he has never known anything like the ‘bizarre’ spell that saw Newcastle lose two goals and four players in the space of 15 minutes during their defeat against Leicester. Magpies defender Florian Lejeune gifted Ayoze Perez the opener before giving the ball away again in the build-up to James Maddison’s second. Newcastle defenders Jetro Willems and Javier Manquillo suffered muscle injuries in the final minute of the first half, and then Newcastle’s skipper Jonjo Shelvey was withdrawn with a hamstring problem at half-time. In the first 60 seconds of the second half, defender Fabian Schar pulled up with a hamstring strain, forcing Newcastle to play out the game with 10 men. ‘In 20 years in management I don’t think I’ve known a crazy 15 minutes like that, from the goals being given away to four players going down with injury. It was bizarre,’ said Bruce after his side’s fourth loss in five matches. ‘I said a month ago that asking players to play four games in 10 days is ludicrous. Today is the consequence of that.’ Lejeune played all four festive fixtures despite just returning from eight months out with a knee injury, and Bruce said: ‘In an ideal world I would have had another centre back available. To ask him to play four games in 10 days is too much. ‘We’ve lost a couple because of individual errors. We’ve been rock solid defensively before that. We have to rediscover that to give ourselves a chance.’