Bruce hails the rise of McClean

Former Sunderland boss Steve Bruce has hailed the development of James McClean and says circumstances contrived to prevent him from playing the Republic of Ireland winger prior to his sacking.

Bruce signed McClean from Derry City last summer but it wasn’t until the former Manchester United star was dismissed and replaced by Martin O’Neill that the 22-year-old was handed his debut in December.

Since then McClean has been a revelation and calls are growing for him to be in Giovanni Trapattoni’s 23-man squad for Euro 2012.

“He’s a boy who’s built a reputation,’’ Bruce mused. “We brought him in last August from Derry. He reminds me of a young Lee Sharpe. He wants to go on the outside of you, he wants to run past you and put it in early with his left foot. They’re a dying breed now, natural left-hand side players.’’

Explaining why he didn’t play McClean, Bruce told Goals On Sunday: ‘‘We signed him late August. So we gave him four, five or six weeks. To throw him into the Premier League coming from the Irish league [would have been tough]. We played Newcastle and beat the reserves 3-0 and on the night he was terrific. I thought to myself: ‘he’s not far off here.’ Unfortunately he twisted his ankle and was out for a month. And of course three or four weeks later I’m down the road. I never had the chance to pick him.’’

Should McClean make the squad for the European Championships, it could be at the expense of Stephen Hunt.

The Wolves winger has been hampered with a hernia problem but after going under the knife to get the problem resolved, he hopes to be back in action for the trip to Swansea at the end of the month.

Hunt, however, views McClean’s emergence as a positive rather than a negative.

‘‘It’s good for me and it will hopefully get the best out of me and obviously, most of all it’s good for Ireland that James McClean is doing so well,” Hunt, who was a guest analyst on RTÉ’s Premier Soccer Saturday, said. ‘‘I think anyone that’s an Irish fan would welcome the pressure on the players. We feel the pressure and want to up our game.’’

Wolves halted a run of seven defeats with a scoreless draw at Sunderland on Saturday but are five points adrift at the foot of the table with just four games to go. Wolves have yet to win since they parted company with Mick McCarthy and Hunt acknowledged that, in hindsight sacking the former Ireland manager was a mistake.

‘‘The board maybe thought it was time for a change,’’ Hunt said. “Little did we know that we’d end up losing a lot of games since we sacked him so it probably proved to be the wrong decision in the end. Maybe we would have been better sticking with Mick.’’

Despite Wolves’ plight, Hunt refused to accept relegation is inevitable but conceded they need to win all of their final four games — starting at home against Manchester City next Sunday — to have any chance of pulling off an unlikely great escape.

‘‘Realistically we need to win all four,’’ he said. ‘‘We need to battle on and give our best. We need to do better. We won’t give up. It’s a tall ask. We have a good honest bunch of lads, we’ll continue to fight and if we get the three points it might just rejuvenate us and give us momentum. Hopefully it’s not too late.’’