All these years later, Daydream Believer still sends a shiver down Steve Bruce's spine.

Following Sunderland's 5-1 defeat to Newcastle United, in 2010, those wearing black-and-white inside St James' Park rose in unison as the Monkees' hit crackled out of the PA speakers at full-time.

"Cheer up Steve Bruce..."

Bruce had spent the days running up to his first Tyne-Wear derby reminding his players how important the game was to Wearside. This was not the response he envisaged.

"It was the toughest couple of weeks of the season," former Sunderland defender Nedum Onuoha told ChronicleLive. "We knew we owed the fans and also to ourselves as that result wasn’t one which we had expected  - and we should not have let it happen.

"But we remembered it and used it as motivation to finish the season above them in the league and achieve our positional goal we’d set ourselves at the start of the season."

Bruce described the 5-1 Tyne-Wear derby defeat as the worst moment in his career

Now, Bruce is preparing to stand in the home dugout in front of those fans who taunted him. Those same supporters whose boos used to make some of Bruce's players at Hull City laugh as he made his way off the team bus at Barrack Road and walked up the steps to the players' entrance.

Make no mistake, Bruce is well aware of the challenge facing him in, somehow, trying to fill Rafa Benitez's sizable shoes. Firefighting is a job he is often tasked with; this is only the second time a Premier League side has appointed him before the start of the season.

The allure of finally managing his boyhood club, who he rejected on two previous occasions, was just too strong. This was potentially the last chance to do it - hence the messy break-up with Sheffield Wednesday.

For Bruce, it's all the more poignant that his parents, Joe and Sheenagh, were not here to see it after they died within 88 days of each other last year.

Bruce's father took him to his first Newcastle game, the Fairs Cup clash with Rangers in 1969, and took to calling him on Fridays to ask what team he was putting out at the weekend when he became a manager. More than anyone, Bruce's parents were the guiding lights in his life.

"Steve owes, in my opinion, a lot of success to his Mum and Dad," John Watson, who encountered Bruce as the head of PE at Benfield School, told ChronicleLive.

Bruce, circled, with Watson, far right

"Unlike many parents, they wanted him to play all sports. They didn't want him to focus on football alone. They were keen for him to have a wide range of sports, which I think was good for him. They never were pushy or came and yelled and shouted; they gave him very sort of quiet help and support behind the scenes."

Bruce's journey into football was far from straightforward and the slight youngster was turned down by a host of clubs, including Newcastle United, along the way.

But, still, he kept plugging away at Wallsend Boys Club

"He lived in Walker but he would walk along two and three times a week just to play five-a-side in the boys club," Peter Kirkley, the club's president, told ChronicleLive. "Then he moved through all the teams that we had then.

"It took a while for clubs to see his potential. At that time, I worked for Burnley and took him down there but they weren't sure about him. He was slight, leggy and it seemed to put clubs off. It was only when he went to Gillingham that they took a chance on him and he took off from there. "

The rest was history. Bruce went on to play more than 900 games, captained Manchester United and helped end the club's 26-year title drought.

Steve Bruce with Neil McDonald, Wallsend Boys Club president Peter Kirkley, Alan Thompson and Lee Clark in 2015

Bruce soon took those standards he set in the dressing room with him into management - never accepting anything less than 100%.

Paul Devlin is in a unique position to give an insight into that after playing alongside Bruce at Birmingham City before then having two spells under his former team-mate when he became a manager at Sheffield United and the Blues.

"The intensity and the level he wanted you to train and how hard he wanted you to train definitely stepped up about four or five levels when he was at Birmingham," he told ChronicleLive.

"That was one thing I sort of noticed more than anything was how different he was from being a novice manager to an experienced manager. I just remember pre-season was 10 times harder than it was at Sheffield United.

"Sheff U was one of the easiest pre-seasons I did; when I went back to Birmingham, and played for him three or four years later, it was one of the most difficult ones."

Devlin was one of a number of players who have had multiple spells under Bruce. Ex-goalkeeper Nico Vaesen is another and played for Bruce at Huddersfield and Birmingham.

Bruce and Vaesen celebrating promotion in 2002 after Birmingham's play-off win against Norwich City

The pair are still in touch and it was Vaesen, now an agent, who recommended Simon Mignolet to Bruce when he was Sunderland manager.

"Man to man, I rate him very highly because he is very understanding so if you have private situations, they always take precedence with him," he told ChronicleLive. "He was never difficult about them. As long as you're professional, and you know what you have to do, he was the best manager you could want.

"I remember when I had a cruciate ligament injury and was having my rehab. I was running around the pitch for the first time and he came over from one of the other training pitches where the first team were training and ran a couple of laps with me just to encourage me and make me feel that he still counted on me and I was still part of the team.

"Those little things are very important for a player and Steve knew how to do it and how to approach those kind of situations."

It was at Huddersfield that former Crystal Palace chief Simon Jordan first clapped eyes on Bruce - and he was far from impressed as the Terriers' boss turned and scowled towards his own chairman, Barry Rubery, from the dugout when things were not going his way.

But when an application from Bruce to be the Eagles' new manager landed on his desk, after just two months in charge of Wigan, Jordan flew him out to Spain for an interview. Neither man knew that they would eventually end up on opposite sides in court.

"When I interviewed Steve, it was against a backdrop of being deeply underwhelmed by what I thought he was," Jordan told ChronicleLive. "He came into an interview with me with not just the obstacle of somebody looking at him without a raft of other people that might want the job but also looking at him with the eyes of somebody who thought, 'I'm not sure I particularly like you. I don't think you represent the values I would want as a football manager.'

"So his ability to convince me in the interview and the subsequent time I spent with him must have been very compelling. Myself and Steve fell out three or four months later because he went off to join Birmingham and did some of the things that I had hoped he wouldn't have done and thought I had eliminated in the interview which makes my support of him, given the fact he and I fell out - he was the first ever football manager put on gardening leave by a chairman - makes it even more compelling that I speak out in the manner that I do about him now.

"I know that despite that time, he is a very, very good manager, a very good leader of men, a very good galvaniser of football clubs. He brings people together - he doesn't divide. He brings players together, he brings all sides of the club together, he brings management together in terms of senior management, i.e. he can manage up."

Now, in his 11th spell in management, Bruce finds himself back in the Premier League at a time when the game has evolved considerably in the top-flight since he was at Hull City.

Labelled a tactical dinosaur by some outsiders, Bruce has looked at other sports to see how he can improve when it comes to managing people, managing scenarios and making sure he gets the best out of his staff and players.

The 58-year-old picked the brains of the England cricket team, for example, while on holiday in Barbados earlier this year.

"We talked a fair bit about fitness. We talked a fair bit about how fitness has improved immensely in cricket and how it's changed an awful lot," Paul Farbrace, who was England's assistant manager at the time, told ChronicleLive.

"We talked about the mentality of the game over five days. It was more a chance to chat about various things we come across on a daily basis in getting the best out of people and him, obviously, exactly the same."

Bruce spent time with Trevor Bayliss and Farbrace in Barbados earlier this year

Key dressing room figures like Matt Ritchie and Jamaal Lascelles have already welcomed Bruce's appointment. Finally some clarity for the players in the most chaotic of summers on Tyneside.

For others, such as Rolando Aarons, who spent last season on loan at Sheffield Wednesday, it could yet be a second chance.

"I've come here, the manager's come here, and everyone's almost got a fresh start. There's been a bit of a buzz and it's kind of helped in the performances and helped me integrate as well," Aarons previously told ChronicleLive in March about his time with the Owls.

“He has a lot of trust in me so, obviously, it helps my confidence in the games."