Clever Darren Fletcher’s a great leader – Jonny Evans

The centre-back, who played alongside Fletcher at Manchester United, says the captain will rarely lose his temper with other players.

Instead, the 33-year-old leads by example on the pitch and puts his arm around the younger players in the dressing room when they need it.

Fletcher has started every single league game so far this season, but hasn’t grabbed as many headlines as the team’s creative players or goal-scoring defenders.

But Evans reckons his calming influence on the squad has played a pivotal role in Albion’s impressive campaign.

“People talk about leaders but people can lead in different ways,” said Evans. “You don’t always have to be a ranter and raver and go into tackles.

“Look at Fletch. He’s a very intelligent guy who will lead in his own way as opposed to other captains I’ve played with but he’s very good at it and everyone respects him.”

Fletcher prides himself on his professionalism, and he blasted Albion’s critics who claimed they were on the beach after reaching 40 points.

“I thought some of the criticisms I read were very disrespectful to a team lying eighth in the Premier League, and deservedly so,” said the Albion skipper. “We want to push on, we want to break that 50 point mark and set a club record for the Premier League but we had a couple of bad results.

“That was disappointing for us but had nothing to do with effort.”

After silencing those critics at the weekend with victory over Arsenal, Albion have now won eight of their last 10 home games in the league.

They have also scored a league-high 14 goals from corners.

“We’ve played really well at home,” said Evans. “We’ve enjoyed that this season, scoring goals.

“The fans have been behind us and I think they’re enjoying it too.

“We’ve got good deliveries coming in and that’s the most important thing.

“We saw with Chris (Brunt) and James (McClean), they put the ball in a great area and when you’re attacking corners it’s very important that the delivery is spot on to give you a chance of scoring.

“That’s probably the reason we score so many at corners.”