Fletcher risks life on fringe

Published on Sunday 5 March 2006 00:32

THE head on Darren Fletcher's bony shoulders will never be other than a mighty sensible one. Since last Sunday, however, it has also been a mighty sore one. Hurt and humiliation are football's most powerful headache-inducers. And while the Manchester United midfielder's teeth don't quite clench as he talks of being happy for team-mates who earned their first medal in the Carling Cup win over Wigan Athletic a week ago, these molars certainly move much closer.

Fletcher wouldn't be human if it was otherwise. The 22-year-old throws out the line about the Millennium Stadium success having "salvaged some pride for the season" for Alex Ferguson's side. Yet pride was exactly what the circumstances surrounding the cup triumph robbed him of. Ferguson has made a case for the Scots midfielder during even the roughest times. For Fletcher then to be told he did not even merit a place in the squad for the final must have been soul-destroying.

Ferguson, indeed, would know exactly how wounding. He called Willie Cunningham "a bastard" for dropping him from Dunfermline's 1965 Scottish Cup final side, only to go on to score 45 goals in 51 matches as a way to "feed the injustice". Fletcher will attempt to use his cup final snub as an equally powerful motivational tool. In doing so, he must banish from his thoughts the fact that the failure of Ruud van Nistelrooy merely to make it off the bench in the 4-0 win is being read as an indication he has little future at Old Trafford.

"No-one said to me that football was going to be easy," states Fletcher, who has made 100 appearances for United after earning his manager's admiration for the manner in which he battled back from serious ankle and knee injuries. Last Sunday, he wasn't simply discarded by Ferguson. "He explained his reasons for dropping me and explained he had been dropped in a cup final," Fletcher says.

Yet the words that the midfielder has drawn comfort from in recent days did not come from the mouth of the fellow Scot who has nurtured and shaped his career. They were uttered by an Englishman and a foe. "I read a comment from Gareth Southgate recently and I thought it was perfect. He said: 'I love football but I hate it'. It has its ups and downs. I played in two FA Cup finals and I was selected before people and this time I wasn't. It is as simple as that. It gives me more determination and a bit of fire in my belly to prove people wrong."

Unfortunately, the number of people that the Dalkeith youngster is required to prove wrong swells by the month. When Fletcher earned a first medal courtesy of the FA Cup final success over Millwall in 2004, he was hardly out of his teens yet had already captained his country at senior level. Greatness for club and country was then considered a given but the intervening period has merely taken.

United's bareness in central midfield has allowed him to stack up the games this season. But in the role of playmaker, increasingly his attributes have not stacked up for a scunnered section of the Old Trafford faithful. On MUTV's regular phone-ins, Fletcher is the whipping boy for the regular tongue-lashings meted out by fans seeking to pinpoint their team's shortcomings. But the player, who must find a way of dislodging the reinvented Ryan Gigs from a central role, remains defiant. "I'll definitely be back in the team, there is no doubt about that. I'll make sure I'm back in the team," he says. "I've just got to work hard in training and wait for my next chance. It might come against Wigan [tomorrow]."

Ferguson admits that Fletcher remains "coltish", while his slender frame and languid style have brought grumbles that he is too slight and too one-paced to drive on United from the engine room as did Bryan Robson, Paul Ince and, notably, Roy Keane. Indeed, the Irishman may have created a perception problem for Fletcher among the United legions.

During the banned MUTV interview in November that sounded the death knell for his godlike Old Trafford career, Keane sneered that he could not understand why everyone in Scotland raved about Fletcher. In the eyes of the club's supporters, the misinterpretation of the gospel according to the man who knew their club best was that Fletcher couldn't hack it - the reason one of them put him up for sale on ebay for 1p and why he was one of those fingered most heavily for the European exit at the Champions League group stages and the inability to mount a sustained challenge for the Premiership title. Fletcher's regard for Keane remains undiminished.

"Roy Keane was, and still has the qualities of, the best midfielder in the world," he says. "He was that in my time at United and he would be an influential player and a world-class performer no matter what team he played in. He showed that in the Old Firm game and is starting to show that since he has been playing in midfield in Scotland. Any team would miss him, and I mean any team - Chelsea, you name it."

Mention of the Stamford Bridge club brings into focus a difficulty for Fletcher that is not of his own making. He tends to make a decent contribution to a United side who win most of their league matches but suffer the odd, sometimes wholly unexpected, reverse along the way. It was ever thus and in the 1990s such form was no impediment to Ferguson guiding his side to regular championship success. Roman Abramovich's largesse has changed all that, however.

"In the Premiership, Chelsea have raised the bar," Fletcher says. "They have lost only twice which is ridiculous with the number of hard games we play. Liverpool are improving all the time, as they showed in the Champions League and are now starting to show in the Premiership. Arsenal are in a transitional period a little bit like us, but they have shown their form in Europe. Teams like Bolton give you horrible matches. Not just because they are physical but because they can adapt and come at you with long balls and come at you with flair. But our results against the bigger teams suggest we should be challenging Chelsea. But it is the games we should have won that we haven't and you could put that down to being sloppy."

Such carelessness, allied to the absence of European and FA Cup football, might mean an unbecomingly unremarkable final two months of a season for Ferguson's side. As if that could be true for Fletcher. If he does not succeed in playing an active role in United remaining immediately behind Jose Mourinho's men, and so claiming the automatic second Champions League group place, he could be permanently pushed to the fringes of the Old Trafford set-up. Yet what happens at United will have no bearing on his international involvement. There is no question that Fletcher is one of the few genuinely gifted performers Walter Smith can count on.

Not that his presence is likely to make much difference. Indeed, his travails at United, and Scotland being paired with Italy, France, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania and the Faroe Islands in the Euro 2008, suggest that Fletcher's long-stated ambitions to win the most illustrious club honours and represent his country in a major finals might remain no more than ambitions for the forseeable future.

"When I heard the draw it was a bit of disappointment and excitement at the same time," he says. "Excited to be playing against these top teams and testing yourself but at the same time thinking that with France, Italy and Ukraine it couldn't be much harder. We were planted right in the middle of seven teams and it made me think we have to pick up maximum points against the countries below us and pick up points elsewhere. So if we do our job against the so-called weaker teams in the group then who knows what can happen?"

Proving they are more than a mid-ranking, make-up-the-numbers team will surely be beyond Scotland in the next two years. Fletcher, meanwhile, has his work cut out to avoid that becoming his status at United.

CEREBRAL PALSY TEAM ABOUT TO COME OF AGE

NOT everyone who pulled on the dark blue of Scotland at Hampden on Wednesday evening will grimace on recalling the experience. The warmest reception was reserved for a group of international players who took to the field at half-time of the 3-1 friendly defeat by Switzerland. But not until their first home encounter kicks off at 2pm today in the Largs national sports centre will Scotland's cerebral palsy international side feel they have arrived.

Set up in co-ordination with the Scottish Football Association's disability officer Stuart Sharp last November, the cerebral palsy team has already competed in a tournament in Copenhagen and this afternoon will face Northern Ireland. Games are played on a seven-a-side basis, with players classified in line with the severity of their disability in order that teams are fairly matched.

Affiliated to the Cerebral Palsy International Sport and Recreation Association (CPISRA), the Scotland team hopes to become sufficiently established to be considered for the paralympics and compete in the European and World Championships.

One in seven people in Scotland has some form of disability and yet this is the first venture of its kind in the country. An absence of funding has made the establishment of disabled sides difficult and the two-year contract of Sharp himself is paid for by McDonald's burger chain.

"We are lobbying UEFA's disability panel to recognise cerebral palsy football and the response we have received from all varieties and ages who want to become involved has shown there is a real interest in the team," Sharp says. "We have launched a national plan for disabled football and we hope to create other teams and encourage senior clubs to become involved. We are still seeking sponsorship for the cerebral palsy side but we are hopeful businesses or other corporate organisations may come forward."

The cerebral palsy internationals train twice a month in the national centre for disabled football at Stirling University and they have recently been joined by a learning abilities group. The latter will shortly play their first game against the Scottish Football Writers Association team and the long-term plan is to widen football under the auspice of the SFA to as many players with different disabilities as can be financially supported.