McClean aiming to nail down regular Republic starting place

If players decided to start singing back at supporters then James McClean might, one suspects, might happily spend his Saturday afternoons chanting “No one likes me, I don’t care,” into the stands.

Like some particularly difficult-to-defeat villain, he seems to feed off the negative energy directed at him, soak it up and spit it back out again. With McClean, though, it all appears to be done in a rather ridiculously good-natured way.

Those who have followed his various twitter spats down the years can only have been struck by the chirpiness of his tone while battling it out with critics who often appear, insofar as social media allows us to gauge these things, to be frothing at the mouth.

McClean was a target for ire again over the weekend when West Brom went back to Sunderland and he was reacquainted with his former club’s fans.

Another player might feel aggrieved to get a hard time from supporters for whom he previously did his best but a smile creeps over the 27-year-old’s face when he is asked about their reaction to his appearance on Wearside.

A motivation

“Ah, sure, I get booed everywhere I go these days but I try to chill out in the right way, I try to use it as motivation.

“They can shout or chant what they want from the stands but they can’t influence what I do on the pitch. If they’re booing you, I’m one of those people who just thinks to himself: ‘I’ll show you, you can boo but I’ll prove you wrong’.”

It is all about demeanour here. You could easily imagine exactly the same words being said with anger or a negative type of intensity but McClean has an “ah, shucks,” air about him as he speaks.

He says his experience of being brought up in Derry, where the street games honed his skills, toughened him up.

The atmosphere around the tight -knit city itself seems to have ensured that no stranger in a stand or out there on cyberspace will ever cause him a moment’s lost sleep.

And he seems, when the issue is raised, not bewildered by his reputation on and off the pitch so much as slightly bemused by it.

“I think, if anything, I have a bit of an unfair reputation,” he says. “I’ve been sent off twice in my career; one was rescinded. I think that’s not bad for someone who is supposed to be a loose cannon running into tackles.

“There on Saturday,” he says, “I got booked late on and straight away I was taken off. The manager said after the game that with the crowd there and how hostile it was, that I might get sent off. Things like that; sometimes it does seem a bit unfair.”

Starting line-up

West Brom manager

Tony Pulis

has occasionally seemed to be less than amused by it all but, despite any misgivings, the manager continues to persist with McClean.

Martin O’Neill, meanwhile, invariably comes across as liking both the person and player and while that has not always translated into a place in the team’s starting line-ups, McClean’s form coming into these games suggests he might well feature prominently.

“I hope so,” he says .“I feel I had a good tournament [in France]; Belgium game aside, but that goes for everyone, you just write that off. Overall, I feel I had a good tournament and I have started the season well for West Brom.

“I played my 100th Premier League game at the weekend, which was a nice occasion for myself and my family. Hopefully it’s the first of a few hundred. And hopefully I’ve done enough to show the manager that he can trust me from the start and not just as an impact sub.

“I want this campaign to be the one where I nail down my place.”