Bruce was accused of not wanting to come into work before he was replaced by Eddie Howe.
Staveley was speaking at the Bloomberg Power Players' Summit in Jeddah.
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On the state of Newcastle when they arrived, she said: There needed to be dramatic change because the club had been run in a very different format.
We had few commercial revenues, we had a team that was aging, a fan base that was angry, and a coach who basically didn't even want to come to work. We had to inject it with life."