Glenn Gibbons: Darren Fletcher has never looked like Roy of the Rovers for Scotland

Or, more precisely, they have a sobering effect on those who are prepared to take the cure for an impairment of judgement caused by excessive chauvinism.

As we have seen throughout the last year or so of the national team’s latest abortive attempt to qualify for a major championship, however, the country seems to be top-heavy with people whose inability to distinguish between the wildly varying levels of playing standards – from the base of the pyramid in the domestic game to the apex of international competition – has deteriorated to the point of being untreatable.

Craig Levein, the manager whose personal performance seems to have attracted the full range of criticism from unqualified condemnation through forgiveness to actual support, should be excused a certain degree of questionable eulogising of his players on the grounds that he cannot reasonably be expected to deliver the hard words demanded by their generally low-grade work.

It is slightly worrying, though, that Levein’s esteem for so many of his mainly mediocre charges too often appears to be authentic rather than diplomatic. The manager’s glowing assessment of his team’s second-half performance in Alicante, for instance, was surely ill-founded. In asserting that “our lads take a lot of credit, especially from the second half”, perhaps he hadn’t noticed that Spain’s two field marshals, David Silva and Xavi, had departed the battle, or that, having taken a 3-0 lead, the home side had surrendered their competitive edge to an urge to showboat in front of their adoring public.

In the matter of inappropriate admiration, of course, Levein is not alone. It has seemed to this observer that each succeeding struggle by the team to overcome two of the feeblest footballing countries in Europe, Liechtenstein and Lithuania, has been accompanied by an unfathomable rush from some quarters of the media and professionals within the game to proclaim the imminence of a new golden age.

One who ought to know better, the captain Darren Fletcher, may have made the most bizarre pronouncement of all when he said that there was no longer any need for him to perform like Roy of the Rovers because his fellow squad members now all played “at the very highest level.” This was a genuine curiosity on two fronts.

The first is that the Manchester United midfielder’s work has never borne the slightest resemblance to that of the legendary (if fictional) Melchester Rovers centre-forward. Fletcher’s contributions in a dark blue shirt have generally been more disappointing than heroic.

Secondly, if it is widely acknowledged that “the very highest level” of European football is the Champions League, Fletcher stands in splendid isolation among his fellow internationals, the only one with any kind of on-going acquaintance with the tournament. Those other Premier League representatives in the Scotland squad – from Aston Villa to Wolves – enjoy the same non-contact relationship with the competition as their compatriots from the Old Firm.

The Glasgow-based contingent – on Tuesday, it was restricted to Rangers’ Steven Naismith and Allan McGregor – almost invariably become conspicuously less than impressive when they step out of a domestic game that is withering from lack of body. Even the normally reliable goalkeeper, McGregor, has a tendency to lose his form in a Scotland shirt, his attempt at preventing Silva’s opening goal in Alicante having the look of an uncharacteristic lapse in concentration and reaction.

Celtic’s representation in Levein’s squad these days is, of course, not only a “singleton” in the person of Scott Brown, but at least as moderate (if not more so) as his rivals from Ibrox. The midfielder may be the present captain of the Parkhead side, but scholars of Celtic lore are never likely to acclaim him as the re-incarnation of Bobby Murdoch.

There was nothing surprising about the unchallengeable superiority of the Spanish on Tuesday (except the unrealistic 3-1 scoreline), but the impossible gap between the teams in every aspect of the game ought surely to have caused many people to revise their idea of what constitutes an exceptional player – and to have persuaded them of the absurdity of assuming that specific members must be special talents simply because they play in a particular league.

Naismith and Barry Bannan, to their credit, at least showed better judgement than most of their apologists when they admitted after the Spain match that they simply were not allowed to be involved in the event, the Rangers man declaring the home team at times “unplayable”.

Bannan has been another peculiar object of worship among the deluded in recent times, the little Villa midfielder promoted in some areas of the media as an emerging virtuoso. This lavishness seemed to stem from no more persuasive evidence than a reasonable performance at home to Lithuania. In other outings since, he has, in the main, demonstrated why he had, until recently, not been a regular first choice for Aston Villa and had, indeed, been sent on loan to a different club in each of the past three seasons.

On Tuesday, he had, in common with others before him (Pat Nevin springs to mind) the look of a wee boy in the big playground. Anyone who believes that Bannan at his present stage is exceptional should look for comparison to such diminutive giants of the Scottish game as Billy Bremner, Jimmy Johnstone and Gordon Strachan, a trio who would not allow themselves to be marginalised by even the most formidable opponents