SCOTT Parker admits he does his best to avoid seeing comments on social media about the job he is doing in management.

Criticism and abuse aimed towards bosses has been highlighted this week, following Steve Bruce's honest interview after he left Newcastle United.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the 60-year-old says he is now likely to retire from management, having reached 1,000 games last weekend, after the strain placed on him and his family during his two-year stint in charge of his boyhood club.

He said: “To never really be wanted, to feel that people wanted me to fail, to read people constantly saying I would fail, that I was useless, a fat waste of space, a stupid, tactically inept cabbage-head or whatever. And it was from day one.

"It was ridiculous and persistent, even when the results were good."

Discussing Bruce's comments, Cherries boss Parker told the Daily Echo: "When I saw that, I felt for Steve. This is someone who is a Geordie himself. It’s his dream job. He’s one of them.

"I’m sure it cut and hurt even more just for him. He’s had an incredible career doing what he’s doing. The longevity he had suggests he’s very good at what he does.

"You don’t have the years he’s had in management being average or not being good, you just don’t. Of course it’s not nice to see."

Asked how he deals with criticism as a manager, Parker added: "I don’t really read it. I don’t see it. I don’t do anything in my life that I look at in terms of, I get that I live in a world of social media, I’ve not got a clue on it.

"I don’t do Twitter, I don’t do all the platforms that people seem to be able to get their opinion across or where you’re going to read that.

"Other than sitting in front of you guys and you asking testing questions or you quizzing something I may have done in a game, then of course I see it then.

"That is the world we live in.

"I’ve got four sons and we live in a world where people want to see people fall short or see them fail. That’s just it.

"We’re in probably the only profession in the world where everyone’s got a big opinion on it and everyone seems to know what’s right or how to deal with things."

He added: "You wouldn’t go to a doctor and tell him he’s made a wrong diagnosis or ‘why are we having this treatment?’, normally you just sit there because he’s a professional and he’s done his 12 years at university and he’s that guy you walk out accepting what he says.

"In football, that’s not the case. That’s just the way it is and I accept that for what it is really.

"Before, in my time, it was just papers. You read the paper and someone had given you a bad rating or someone had something to say, and that was just it. If you didn’t buy a paper, you didn’t really hear about it.

"Now you go into a changing room after a game and instantly the players can look on their phone and instantly they can see, through millions and millions of different outlets, what exactly is being said.

"As always, as is human nature and human instinct, for every 10 compliments you get, the one bad one you see about yourself or someone has written about you is probably the one which sticks with you and hurts you a little bit more. Hence why I don’t read it and don’t want to read it.

"I don’t need to know someone’s opinion who is living in Doncaster who just doesn’t like me because they’ve seen me on TV and is making an instant judgment on me because I’ve shouted at a ref in a game.

"All of a sudden he’s going to call me, I don’t need to say what. If it’s the wife calling me it then it might be different!"