Sunday 24 September 2017 12:42, UK
Steven Taylor told Goals on Sunday that he was once in a Newcastle United team meeting where players put their hands up to confirm they wanted to be at the club.
Following the club's relegation from the Premier League in 2009, they were thrashed 6-1 by Leyton Orient in a pre-season friendly - and that was followed by a heated team meeting led by manager Chris Hughton and midfielder Kevin Nolan.
And former captain Taylor recalls that a number of players made it clear they did not want to be part of Newcastle's bid to win promotion from the Championship.
He said: "We played Leyton Orient in the last game of pre-season before we went into the Championship and we got battered in that game.
"We got absolutely hammered and we had a meeting the next day and Kevin Nolan and Chris Hughton said 'listen, if you don't want to be here, put your hand up'.
"A few players put their hand up and in the space of a week those players had gone."
Taylor did not name any of the players, but the likes of Obafemi Martins, Sebastien Bassong and Habib Beye all left the club between the Leyton Orient friendly and the start of the season.
He added: "People were putting their hands up, yeah, because I think they had their moves sorted, so they knew anyway that they were going.
"I think players know who the ones are who are going to leave and it was kind of making sure we knew."
Newcastle ultimately won promotion back to the Premier League that season, winning the Championship under Hughton.
And Taylor said the squad's mentality was very different from the one that was relegated from the top flight under caretaker boss Alan Shearer.
"The players… it didn't hurt enough and that was the biggest thing for us," he said of Newcastle's 2009 relegation.
"Alan Shearer came in and he tried to get rid of the players he didn't think were going to be here the following season.
"It was a learning curve and I think it was a good thing for us to get rid of the players who didn't want to be there.
"It was the best thing for Newcastle at that time, getting rid of those kind of egos and getting players for the Championship to get us back to where we wanted to be."
