Former Premier League manager Lawrie Sanchez has exclusively told The Transfer Tavern that he believes Steve Bruce will stay on at Newcastle next season.

Bruce recently told talkSPORT that he never came close to leaving but has faced several problems on and off the pitch during a challenging campaign at St James' Park.

Not to mention the failed takeover bid, the Magpies have suffered some major injuries to key players, whilst the head coach was involved in a training ground bust-up with experienced midfielder Matt Ritchie.

Despite those setbacks, Bruce masterminded Newcastle to Premier League safety once again, and even picked up the April Premier League Manager of the Month award for his efforts following impressive results against Tottenham, West Ham and Liverpool before their recent victory at Leicester all but secured their topflight status.

Newcastle continued their improvements against Manchester City on Friday, although this time it didn’t show in the points column, but a strong end to the campaign could still result in a higher bottom-half finish.

And Lawrie told The Transfer Tavern that the 60-year-old will still be there next term:

"I don’t think he will call it a day. He’s near 1000 games. He’s done a cracking job at keeping them up there.

"He will always get a job because he will always get you promoted or keeps you up – that’s his forte.

"Being a Newcastle boy, he would like to be given a chance with a bit of money to spend, but as we all know, we saw it with West Ham, they get rid of the English manager and bring in a foreigner to spend it and then have to go back to the English manager to sort out the problem afterwards. I would imagine that’s what will happen with Newcastle."