Matt Doherty quickly sets the record straight when it is put to him that he was rejected by five clubs before Wolverhampton eventually took a chance on him, after a couple of years cleaning carpets with his dad back in Ireland. “It wasn’t five trials, it was mid-teens,” he says. “I was at 14 or 15 different clubs when I was younger, and I didn’t play that well when I was away. I would readily admit that now, there was a lot of disappointment as a kid.”

Doherty’s story is one of persistence. Even when he got his break and made it to the Premier League, there was a seven-year gap between his first appearance in the top flight, against Liverpool in 2011, and his second, against Everton last month. The 26-year-old had a loan spell at Bury, suffered two relegations with Wolves and won two promotions. That he is still at the club to tell the tale is testament to him. “I’ve survived a lot of managers, so I must have been doing something right,” says the Irishman, smiling, ahead of Sunday’s home game against Burnley.

His journey into the professional game certainly feels a little different to many of the stellar names lining up alongside him at Molineux these days. As well as enduring all of those knockbacks, Doherty effectively sacrificed his education to chase the dream of becoming a professional footballer.

“I left school to go to so many trials,” he says. “There was no point in me going to school because I was away all the time. It was a risk we took at the time and it looked like it had backfired for a few years. I started working for my dad – he had his own company in carpet upholstery cleaning. I was doing whatever he said. It was hard work, it made me grow up and realise that it’s not what I wanted to do. We were in the van all the time having talks [about a career in football].”

In the end it was a pre-season game for Bohemians against Wolves that provided Doherty with the opportunity he craved. He signed for Wolves in 2010 and as the club’s longest-serving current player is better qualified than anyone else to talk about how much things have changed. “It’s a completely different place and it’s obviously for the better,” he says.

Fosun International, the club’s Chinese owners, are behind the transformation and Doherty says that the players are under no illusions about the scale of the ambitions. “We’re pretty aware that they mean business. They’re looking for Wolves to go as high as they can as quick as we can. It’s up to us, the players that are here at the moment, to try and produce for them because all the stuff that they’re doing – the players that they’re bringing in and the [work at the] training ground – they’re backing us, so we have to back them as well.”

Wolves have started the season well, with the only setback a 2-0 defeat at Leicester, where Doherty endured an afternoon to forget. “I missed a great chance, scored an own goal and then went off injured,” he says. “[With the own goal] it couldn’t have hit my head any cleaner and went in the top corner. When I went away with Ireland a few of the boys brought it up.”

Doherty’s international career is the subject of much debate at home. Despite flourishing for Wolves over the past few seasons, he has won only three Ireland caps, with Martin O’Neill saying earlier this week that the wing-back needs to drive forward more. “That’s his opinion when he watches me. I wouldn’t say I have the same opinion,” Doherty says.

Asked whether there is a personal issue between him and O’Neill and if there is any truth to the suggestion that the Republic of Ireland manager was unhappy with him for wearing gloves, Doherty replied: “He’s mentioned the gloves. I wear them because it’s cold. When I first went out he had a joke about the gloves, nothing too serious. I don’t know [if that is an issue]. Ask him. I know he’s said he would like me to attack more. Maybe I’ll do that. When I first joined up it was my defending that was the problem. Now it’s my attacking. Maybe my face just doesn’t fit.”

Nothing could be further from the truth with his club.