James McClean: Republic of Ireland’s big-game mentality can boost Euro 2024 push

James McClean is banking on the Republic of Ireland’s big-game mentality to force them back into Euro 2024 contention.

Ireland belatedly registered their first win of the qualifying campaign at the third time of asking when they beat Gibraltar 3-0 in Dublin on Monday evening.

Coming after a hard-fought 1-0 home defeat by France and a less-impressive display in a 2-1 reverse at the hands of Greece in Athens on Friday night, victory was the very least they needed ahead of September’s trip to Paris and the Netherlands’ visit to the Aviva Stadium three days later.

Asked about the Dutch in particular, McClean, who won his 100th senior cap against Gibraltar, said: “I don’t want to create headlines and be disrespectful, but they seem to have a lot of very good individual players, but maybe as a team they are not where they want to be, and hopefully we can exploit that.

“I actually think we perform better in the big games, as you have seen here against France.”

Realistically, Ireland will need to get the better of the Netherlands over the two fixtures if they are to stand any chance of escaping from Group B, and the odds remain heavily stacked against them despite Monday’s win.

They went into that game having been roundly criticised for their performance in Athens and with manager Stephen Kenny feeling the full force of a concerted backlash.

McClean, who provided assists for both Evan Ferguson and Adam Idah, said: “Nobody likes being criticised, that’s the way it is. No one likes it, but we’re not stupid. This is the game we are in.

“If you don’t perform and do well, criticism comes along with that, as does praise when you are doing well, so you have to take the bad with the good.

“We bounced back. It’s a massive win to take us