Steve Bruce has opened up on his discussions with the new Newcastle owners when they completed their takeover of the club.
The 62-year-old suffered a poor two-year spell as boss at St James' Park before he was axed by the incoming Saudi consortium, who replaced Mike Ashely.
Bruce has now revealed though that he left on his own accord and when he did leave he put forward the names of Steven Gerrard and Eddie Howe as potential replacements.
Speaking about his conversations with the Newcastle owners, he told the Business of Sport podcast: "I had to say to them: 'Look, you might have to take me out of the equation'.
"It's the hardest thing I ever had to say, but I realised it was for the best for the club because everything was euphoric around it. The only negative was me.
"They even asked me, and I can say this on record, they even asked me who I would recommend.
"I did recommend Eddie [Howe] and I did recommend, I hope Steven doesn't mind, but I recommended Steve Gerrard too.
"But somebody like Eddie or Steven, young, take it on.
"It was really, really difficult. And I've never done that before - it's sort of giving up - but I realised it was best for the club."
He continued: "I thought I had to because we got beat by Tottenham after we scored early - we scored after 20 seconds or something. We got beat 3-2 off Spurs.
"It was the word 'give up' - that's the wrong word for me. I never wanted to give it up, but I realised that I had to and it was more beneficial to the club, that they needed to make a clean sweep and take the negativity out of the equation which was me."
