• Manager still upset with players over 5-0 ‘surrender’ • Clear-the-air talks scheduled for later in the week

Steve Bruce cancelled a scheduled training session on Monday as emotions reached boiling point at Newcastle United. But it is understood Rafael Benítez’s successor will be given time to try to put things right at St James’ Park.

In the wake of the team’s 5-0 defeat at Leicester – or “surrender” as Bruce described it on Sunday – the manager subjected his players to an old school “hairdryer” treatment, and later told the media it had been the worst technical area experience of his coaching career.

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With Newcastle’s squad apparently shocked into silence by that angry dressing room tirade and struggling to cope with the transition in managerial styles between Benítez and Bruce, results have been poor this season. The team have taken five points from seven games, winning only once – albeit at Tottenham – with further unease fuelled by persistent suggestions of players being confused by Bruce’s tactics.

Clear the air talks between team and management are now scheduled for later in the week with the captain, Jamaal Lascelles, expected to assume a prominent role.

Although Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s owner, is believed to be prepared to make a change in order to prevent another relegation, he is reluctant to part company with Bruce so early in the campaign, and particularly after paying Sheffield Wednesday significant compensation in order to recruit him. Moreover Ashley was turned down by several short-listed candidates before appointing Bruce in July and may not find it easy to identify a suitable, and willing, successor.

Even so, Bruce had what has been described as a “tense” exchange with Lee Charnley, the managing director, in the wake of the Leicester defeat and could probably do without facing his old club, Manchester United, in front of the television cameras on Tyneside on Sunday.

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First will come the inquest into events at the King Power Stadium where, by way of exacerbating Bruce’s pain, the midfielder Isaac Hayden was shown a straight red card.

Andy Carroll, who came on as a second-half substitute against Leicester, said: “We can’t play like that again. The gaffer was fuming and rightly so – it was absolutely terrible. The heads went down; what happened was a disgrace.”