Hang on in there - James McFadden on his Championship frustrations

James McFadden is not finding life easy in the Championship, where results are regularly ground out rather than won through guile and trickery

IT WOULD have been easy for James McFadden to sell us a lie, to whistle his way into the Cameron House hotel the other morning and give the impression of a deeply contented man. Most of his contemporaries would have. Most would have sung about Birmingham being top of the table, would have chirped about how great it is to be playing regular football for the first time in years. Top of the league, boys. What's not to like, right? From the overwhelming majority of the football world you'd have got the big smile and the party line, but McFadden has always been a little different, hasn't he? Always an against-the-grain kind of guy, always capable of the unexpected.

So we don't get the PR, we get the reality. Right between the eyes. You could call it moaning if you like but there was more to it than that. McFadden has at last found himself in favour at club level but in a league he may not be cut-out for, a league where much of the emphasis is on survival, on physicality, not on the kind of trickery he brings to the table. Time was, with Scotland, when Alex McLeish couldn't get through a press conference without using the word gallus in connection with McFadden, but you don't hear that so much any more. You don't get to be top of the Championship by being gallus. You get there, largely, by being bigger and more powerful than your opponent. You get there through resilience over brilliance most days.

"Hopefully we can stop trying to grind results out and instead try and dominate games because it's not enjoyable having to hang on every week," says McFadden.

Hanging on at Derby and Cardiff… "We can probably say we played well in maybe one game, the first-half of the Bristol game and then we sat back and hung on for the win. We've not played well at all."

Hanging on at Bristol and Norwich… "I don't think anybody can come off and say 'right, we've done well there, that was a good performance in terms of playing football'. We've not really done it yet."

Hanging on at Southampton and QPR… "People question whether you can grind out results. Well, we've done that. We just need to take it on to the next level. It's time for us to kick on and push away from the rest of them."

Birmingham have played 10 games in the league and nine of them have either been drawn or have been won or lost by one goal. That pretty much proves McFadden's point. Every game is hard work. No freewheelin' at Birmingham so far. No respite. Not many fans either. St Andrews holds 30,000 but it's never full, never close to being full, 19,815 the average. Top of the table and there's empty seats. If McFadden is finding life away from the Premier League a little hard to take then there's plenty more like him in the city.

He's got Burnley away on Saturday. Burnley away. Not exactly what he dreamed about in the summer when there was all that talk about him getting a move elsewhere. He was interested in staying in the Premier League, no question. Hasn't really discussed it until now.

"I spoke to the manager (McLeish] but I never asked away. I felt that if the chance came for me to stay in the Premier League then that would be the best thing for me but it never came about. I never sulked, I never asked at any point to leave, I never said, 'you need to let me go'. Even before we went down, one of the owners said if we went down he'd need to sell the best players so straight away you're thinking 'where does that leave me?'. Another summer of unsettlement. Nothing ever happened and I'm quite happy.

"I wouldn't say it's a comedown (in the Championship], but I want to play in the Premier League, everybody does. You can't help what happens. It's not been difficult for me to get my head round the fact that you're playing the likes of Blackpool at home because they're competitive. At times they're not enjoyable, but they're competitive. It's got the biggest rewards of any league, it's the division where there's most at stake and teams tend to tighten up and the football can suffer. Roberto Martinez (manager of Swansea] said he played more football with Swansea in League One, but it's just been kick it and head it in the Championship. Anybody has got a chance of making the play-offs. I'll be honest, I wouldn't be looking forward to a second season in the Championship. But it's a long time away and at the minute we're sitting top of the league and if we keep getting the results then I won't need to."

Not many goals for McFadden at the moment. Even the one he got for Scotland was given to Barry Robson. When your luck's out, it's out. Just one for Birmingham this season, one in 14 league games if you count the tail-end of last season. He's struggling. Has no problem admitting it. It's not just the goals, there's mitigating circumstances there. It's his general play. As yet he hasn't been able to impose himself on games the way he can.

"I'm not really that concerned (about the lack of goals]. I've played maybe three or four games up front, the rest have been on the left or right wing. There's loads of games and the goals will come. It's mainly been big Gaz (Garry O'Connor] and Kevin Phillips or (Cameron] Jerome on his own. If other players are making an impact, the manager maybe sees it better for me to be out wide. I don't know, you'd need to ask him, but I'd prefer to play through the middle. I've said that for the last five or six years, but I'll play wherever the manager wants me to play.

"The form's not been great if I'm being honest, but I just need to get through it by working hard. I need to make sure that I play the way that when I come off the pitch I'll be happy with how I've played. I've not really had that feeling too often this season. I've always been self-critical. You know yourself if you've not played well. I'm not going to kid on that I was brilliant if I wasn't.

"I don't know what it is. Sometimes you go through a wee spell and you're not happy with the way you're playing, but I wouldn't put it down to any one thing. I'm not low on confidence, I'm just not playing particularly well at the minute. It's not as if I'm hopeless when I'm playing, I'm just not happy enough with what I'm doing."

The trip to Scotland has done wonders for him in the past and it's to his country he turns again in search for the solution to his current difficulties. Nice to get a break from the day job? "It's been my break for the last five years," he replies, with a wry smile. "Football can change so quickly but that's why everyone loves the game. You suffer lows but you get the greatest of highs as well."

Nobody knows what it's like on the mountain top as well as McFadden. Paris and all that still plays a part in his life. Paris and the wonder goal. Strangers mention it all the time. It's something he appreciates, but it's not something he wants to fall into deep conversation about. Like his hope for Birmingham, he just wants to kick on. "I'm not wanting to wish it away but I don't want to sit and talk about it every single day. It's nice that people got a buzz out of it, though."

Maybe he's not buzzing at Birmingham right now but there's time yet. And in the meantime, there's always Scotland.