St Mirren face competition in a bid to sign Northern Irish midfielder Caolan Boyd-Munce, who opted to leave Middlesbrough to get first team football.

The former Birmingham City star is currently training with the Saints and manager Stephen Robinson has been impressed with the 23-year-old, who moved to Boro a year ago.

He left the English Championship club in January to get more game time, despite having two years left of his contract and Saints have moved to the front of the queue to land the player, who won 21 caps for Northern Ireland Under 21s and played four times for Michael Carrick's side.

However, clubs in Scotland, England and in Europe are also monitoring Boyd-Munce, who explained his dream is to play international football.

He said: "The hope is to get in somewhere until the end of the season and play some games. That was the whole point really. I’m 23 now and I just want to play games. I’m fortunate to still be in the frame with the national team, so I need to be playing games.

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"There have been plenty of offers from across all of Europe, to be honest. But it has to be right. I can’t just jump at something, it needs to be a club where I’m going to play games because I don’t just want to end up in the same position again. It has been tough, but hopefully, it will work out for me.

"It was hard. I could have quite easily sat comfortably for the next two years, trained away and seen what happened.

"But I was at the stage where I just thought, I want to play. The club were fantastic and the gaffer was fantastic. They said normally they wouldn’t do it, but they said because I’d done everything I could and I’d worked my socks off and had a brilliant attitude always, they were willing to be the same with me."

St Mirren see Boyd-Munce as a replacement for Ethan Erhahon, who joined Lincoln City in January, but face serious competition in their bid to sign him.