MARTIN O’NEILL HAS been here before with James McClean.
The newly-installed Ireland boss had to deal with James McClean and issues with Twitter while manager of Sunderland.
And in O’Neill first week in the FAI job, the Derry-born Wigan winger labelled the Belfast Telegraph as a “bitter sectarian paper,” whose journalists are “bigots” in a tweet to a friend yesterday.
“[I] wasn’t overly pleased,” said O’Neill in Poznan on Monday night ahead of the friendly clash against Poland.
“James seems to enjoy the Twittering, his performance merited one or two tweets from other people saying how well he’d done rather than James getting embroiled in it again. So, it all leads to the whole thing again about the tweeting. I think even before I arrived here there was a match-day ban on tweeting. I think even a match-day minus one or plus one whatever the case may be. But I’ll have a look at it, I’m just experiencing these things again.
“I don’t want to be a guru over this social media. Players… I think there needs to be a bit of responsibility really and sometimes I think the players don’t realise after all this time — maybe they do — that this is a public media. Anything you say is picked up.
“I’ve reminded James you know. The last time with James, it was a fairly lengthy time since the last time I mentioned it to him so there’s been a lot of tweeting under the bridge since then.”
Asked if the episode will see McClean — man-of-the-match against Lativa — drop to the bench, O’Neill said: ”If I’m going to leave players out cos they’ve tweeted then I’m going to be in serious trouble down the line. That’s a sort of semi-joke, you know that?
“If James doesn’t start tomorrow night it won’t be anything to do with the tweeting. But I’ll still have to have a word with him.”
