Isaac Hayden has revealed that Newcastle United paid his £19,000 fine last season after Eddie Howe 'loved' his tweet.
Hayden accepted an FA charge of improper conduct following the social media post, which was written in the aftermath of Newcastle's 1-0 defeat against Chelsea. The tweet read: 'Some performance from the boys against 12 men'.
The injured midfielder, who was watching on from home, made the comment after referee David Coote decided against giving the visitors a penalty at Stamford Bridge after Trevoh Chalobah pulled down Jacob Murphy. The tweet was found to be in breach of FA Rule 3.1. for 'attacking the integrity of the official' and an independent regulatory commission handed Hayden a £19,000 fine. However, Hayden, who is now on loan at Norwich City, did not have to stump up the cash himself.
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"I get to training," he recalled to the Steven Sulley study podcast "The manager pulls me in his office and he goes, 'The FA are going to do something. See what they say and go from there. Oh, by the way, loved the tweet.' I said, 'Cheers gaffer!'
"I wasn't expecting him to say that but Eddie Howe is a very good man manager, a very good operator. I didn't work under him for a long period of time, but I loved my time working under him and I'm so glad that him and the team are doing really well now.
"Anyway, a couple of days went by. A week went by. I thought, 'Oh, they're just leaving it'. Then my Twitter notifications were going off and it pinged up: 'Hayden breaching FA rule, blah-de-blah-de-blah.' It was going to a judge or a panel and I was thinking, 'This is a load of rubbish over a tweet.'
"It came back: a £19,000 fine. I was like, 'What?!' You've got the manager and all the lads in the changing room going, 'Oh my God! £19,000! All that for a tweet?' To be fair, the club actually paid so I didn't pay. Sorry FA."
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