Alex Lowry has opened up on the intense scrutiny that was on him at Rangers - and hit back at claims of laziness of an attitude problem.
Now at Motherwell, the talented midfielder was seen as the next big thing when coming through at Auchenhowie.
With bags of technical ability, he was on the fringes of the Rangers first-team squad and was widely expected to make the breakthrough.
But a loan spell at Hearts was unsuccessful and his career stalled - with a perception that it was largely down to the player's attitude.
But the 23-year-old Wycombe Wanderers loanee is thriving at Fir Park, a key man in their campaign so far with two goals scored.
He told a Motherwell documentary: “Coming through at Rangers, there’s a lot of scrutiny on you from a younge age.
“Straight away, you’re kind of in the limelight in a way. There are a lot more eyes on you and what you do.
“For certain people, it can affect you. It maybe affected me at certain points in my life.
“But as I’ve got older, I’ve started to realise that as long as I’m happy, the club are happy, my family are happy, my girlfriend’s happy, my dog’s happy, whatever – that just makes my life 10 times easier.
“I try not to really look at it, I’ve come off social media and when I was younger, I’d maybe look at that stuff and get down about it.
“But nowadays, it’s just focus on my football, enjoy my football and live a quiet nice life.”
Addressing the laziness and bad attitude accusations, he went on: “I can see both sides of it. I’ve got a kind of relaxed posture and relaxed kind of demeanour, which can come across as lazy.
“But if you speak to any of the boys at the club, they’d probably say I work really hard.
“Previous coaches I’ve worked under would say I definitely worked hard. I do my best day in and day out.
“As I’ve got older, I’ve put more of an emphasis on working harder and doing more stuff in the gym and being more professional, maybe.
“Maybe when I was a bit younger, I would rely on my ability which would get me out of trouble.
“Now it’s a case of head down and prove them wrong. Basically just try and shift the narrative to ‘no, he does work hard, he is a team player.’
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“It’s just a case of trying to change the narrative game by game, week by week and we’ll see where it ends up.
“Loads of boys I came through with, we’d speak about it, and it’d become a bit of a joke.
“But you know it’s not a joke, you do think about it a lot and you start to doubt yourself.
“I’ve seen boys that it’s really affected and other boys it’s maybe not affected as much.
“I’d probably be one of the ones it’s not affected too much because I don’t really read into it.
“But definitely for players coming through at certain clubs, it’s hard to come through it.
“It’s more of a mental game than it is a technical, tactical game which is really hard for young boys that are fresh into the game to deal with.”
