Alan Pardew believes that WhatsApp groups are responsible for fanning the flames of toxicity within football dressing rooms.
The 58-year-old, whose last job in management with West Brom ended after just four months in April of last year, was speaking on Eamon Holmes's, 'A Pint with Eamonn and the Gaffers' podcast.
"When I was a player," said Pardew, "and you're at the training ground, and you think the manager has picked on you... you'd finish training, you'd talk in the shower maybe to a fellow player [and say]: 'I'm not sure about the gaffer there, what was he going on about that for? That was out of order'. Blah, blah, blah.
"[Then] you'd get in your car and you'd go home, and actually by the time you'd had a sleep and everything else [and] you're back to the training ground, you're over it. In football you've got to move on quickly, so you're okay again.
"Now, when players are leaving the training ground, they're not leaving the training ground, they're WhatsApp-ing each other... the guy that's really toxic is now being very toxic to the whole group and he's bringing people in.
"Suddenly, you arrive at the training ground and there's a strange atmosphere... they've all made a different outcome to what you as a manager perceived would be the outcome.
"And it's completely out of your control, of course. You can't infiltrate it, you don't want to infiltrate it really because then you're asking for even more problems I would guess. The senior players and toxic players now have a bigger control over the dressing room."
