Newcastle United defender Paul Dummett admits the negative press for manager Steve Bruce can influence the players.

Dummett was discussing last week's bust-up between Bruce and Matt Ritchie.

"Players want to be playing games and when players are not playing games, they're not happy and it can cause arguments and it's probably the fact that we're near the bottom of the league so it creates a bigger story," he told BT Sport.

"It's obviously difficult when there's a lot of negative press around the manager. We want to try and focus on playing football and, as a team, we're behind the manager.

"Whether or not he was the manager or we had a different manager, we need to make sure as a team we're fighting for whoever is in charge and as long as he's in charge of the club then the squad here will fight as much as we can to do the best we can."