Fletcher goals see Scotland absence felt all too keenly

STEVEN Fletcher continues to make life more comfortable for Mick McCarthy, his club manager at Wolverhampton Wanderers. At the same time he is succeeding in making Craig Levein’s life slightly more uncomfortable.

His two goals for Wolves in the weekend win over Sunderland has pushed Fletcher back on to the Scotland manager’s agenda – with many having long felt the player should be an integral part of Levein’s squad.

Levein, of course, can argue that Fletcher could score a hat-trick each weekend for Wolves and it wouldn’t take him any nearer the Scotland squad than he already is due to the striker’s decision to withdraw himself from international consideration earlier this year.

Fletcher controversially texted the Scottish Football Association in February to say he no longer wished to be selected for international duty, after being left among the unused players during a double-header against Czech Republic and Spain. He was also left out of a largely experimental side who took on the Faroe Isles in a friendly at Pittodrie last November.

The former Hibs centre forward, Levein maintains, holds the key to the question of his future Scotland ambitions. Even more so than scoring goals, the most decisive action the striker can take is picking up the phone to Levein, or at least making contact with one of the manager’s staff. This has not happened yet and neither has Levein made efforts to speak to the player.

The impasse continues at a time when the international team is in a lull following the disappointing Euro 2012 campaign – their seventh successive failure to reach a major finals. Scotland’s next fixture is a friendly against Slovenia at the end of February. It does seem an ideal time for a reconciliation, with meaningful international football having taken a back-seat for a number of months.

The frustration is that it seems such a straightforward conflict to solve. The serious issue of a 44-day prison sentence does not lie at the heart of this dispute, as it did when Duncan Ferguson called time on his Scotland career at the age of just 27. The goals he continued to score in the Premier League for Everton and Newcastle United were greeted with a measure of deflation north of the Border as they underlined what Scotland were missing.

The hope is that Fletcher’s success in the English Premier League need not inspire such negative thoughts in the time to come. The striker is only 24. He is too young to have shelved his international career. It is also unrealistic to expect a change of international manager in the near future, something which some felt needed to happen if Fletcher was to return.

Levein seems sincere in his repeated observations that he is not the one who has placed the Scot in exile. The manager appears prepared to welcome him back. The only stipulation that Levein appears to have made is that Fletcher has to be the one to initiate contact. Despite McCarthy’s insistence that Fletcher still wants to play for Scotland, The Scotsman understands that Fletcher has not made any moves to get in touch with Levein.

Levein has expressed his satisfaction at the options open to him in attack at present. Kenny Miller’s winner for Cardiff City against Birmingham City on Sunday emphasised that he still has goals to offer in his thirties. The emergence of Craig Mackail-Smith and Jamie Mackie is promising, but neither is operating on quite the same level as Fletcher at present.

With ten goals in his last 15 appearances for Wolves, Fletcher is required to bow only to Robin van Persie when it comes to rating a player’s value to their club. Van Persie has scored an incredible 32 league goals in this calendar year and has done much to ease the pressure which had been building on Arsene Wenger. It has to be noted that Fletcher is playing in a team far less likely to create goal- scoring chances compared to Arsenal. His goals were central to Wolves’ survival last season and the striker’s brace against Sunderland has moved the team out of the relegation area into 15th place.

“It’s my job to score the goals and I am just trying to do it to the best of my ability,” he said following the win. Fletcher’s next game is scheduled to be at Old Trafford on Saturday. Another goal there and his status as the most effective Scottish striker will become an even more inconvenient truth.