Ruud Gullit took charge of Newcastle United in August 1998. A turbulent season followed and he resigned almost exactly a year later. Not all of The Magpies players got on with the Amsterdam native, and Rob Lee was one of them, laying into Gullit on the podcast Undr The Cosh.
In his first and ultimately only full season, Gullit led Newcastle to the FA Cup final, where they lost to the legendary treble-winning Manchester United. Their Premier League form was poor and they finished 13th.
By the start of the 1999/00 season, Newcastle had taken just one point from their first five matches. Tensions were also brewing inside the squad. Gullit left Duncan Ferguson and captain Alan Shearer on the bench for the always heated derby against Sunderland, which Newcastle lost 2-1.
He sent on both Shearer and Ferguson as substitutes, then partly blamed them for the painful defeat. A day later that sparked a confrontation at the training ground. Combined with Newcastle's 18th-place position at the time, it led to Gullit's departure two days later.
Among the players at Gullit's disposal was Lee, but the former midfielder, who played for Newcastle between 1992 and 2002, certainly does not look back fondly on Gullit's spell at St James' Park.
"That was my worst period at the club," Lee begins. "I had just signed a three-and-a-half-year contract under Kenny (Gullit's predecessor Kenny Dalglish, ed.). Gullit just couldn't get rid of me. There were a number of players - me, John Barnes, Ian Rush, Stuart Pearce... He had no idea what to do with us."
"In pre-season he took my number 7 shirt off me. He didn't want me in the team photo. He didn't tell me that himself, others did it for him. He was arrogant. The most arrogant man I've ever met in my life."
Lee did not receive a squad number at all and spent "a number of months" playing for Newcastle's reserve team, although the coach there told him that he and others being frozen out of the first team did not necessarily have to do so.
Later, Lee crossed paths with Gullit a few more times. "But when people are arrogant, there's no point talking to them. He constantly talked about Chelsea (where Gullit was manager between 1996 and 1998, ed.). 'We beat you all the time,' he would say. Fucking hell."