Tom English: Levein must show he can manage as well as coach

WE HAVE spoken about Steven Fletcher and his spat with Craig Levein in this space before. The fact that we are doing so again doesn’t reflect particularly well on either man. The player has made himself unavailable, by way of a text message, for tonight’s Carling Nations Cup game against Northern Ireland and the manager by dint of doing nothing has accepted Fletcher’s withdrawal with a shrug.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs. Childish and avoidable. Sure, Fletcher was impulsive and daft to turn down the chance of playing for his country this week, but the fault lies principally at Levein’s door on this one. Managers are paid to manage. They are in high office because they are supposed to be adept at handling truculent footballers, talking them down from the cliff edge and making things better, not worse, as Levein has done.

When Fletcher threw his hissy fit, Levein should have got him on the phone and talked to him. He should have said, ‘Right Steven, let’s sort this out’, because it was in Scotland’s – and Levein’s – interests to do so. Instead what happened? Fletcher was outed as a refusenik. Either Levein, or one of his staff, let it be known to journalists that the player had sent a text saying that he wouldn’t be making the trip. Fletcher was thereby hung out to dry. Now, you might say that he deserved to be for having the temerity to refuse the call-up, but in whose interests was it to embarrass the player? Sometimes these guys need protecting from themselves. This was one such example.

Levein is not exactly loaded down with options up front, is he? Kenny Miller is in excellent form, but he’s 31 years old. He’s not what you might call the coming man. Elsewhere, when they’re all fit, the cast of characters up front includes Jamie Mackie, Kris Boyd, Chris Iwelumo, Chris Maguire and Kevin Kyle. That can’t be anybody’s idea of a stellar cast. Fletcher is better than all of those guys.

He is young and talented and, critically, he’s got more to offer than any of the other strikers, bar Miller and, if he’s used up front, Steven Naismith. He’s the only English Premier striker that Levein has – or had – at his disposal and yet the Scotland manager doesn’t seem fussed about bringing an end to their little feud, started, admittedly, by the player when he gave an interview to a newspaper and expressed his frustration at being ignored in the early matches of the Levein era.

The first thing Levein should do when he gets back from Dublin is get Fletcher on the phone and talk to him. Why let this fester? What has he got to lose by talking the player around? He has work to do before then, of course. When Scotland play Northern Ireland tonight the Aviva Stadium is going to be deserted save for the redoubtable Tartan Army and a sprinkling of fans from Ulster. It’s going to have the look of a meaningless friendly, but it is anything but. This is a big evening for Levein. It’s not a time to mess about with an experimental line-up and mass substitutions.

After such a poor start to the qualification campaign for next year’s European championships, Levein doesn’t have a whole lot of credit in the bank of goodwill. When you’ve drawn with Lithuania, scraped home against Liechtenstein and gone 4-6-0 and lost in the Czech Republic then you don’t have the luxury of looking at matches as friendlies. Levein knows his history. He knows that the hammer finally fell on Berti Vogts and George Burley after heavy losses in friendly games. If he is going to stand a chance of convincing anybody that his team are still in with a chance of making it to the play-offs then this is a game he really has to win.

In the aftermath of the gallant loss to Spain, Levein said he’d underestimated the skill of his players. He didn’t think they were capable of playing the attacking but controlled football they produced against the world champions at Hampden. It was quite a statement for a man who has been familiar with these players ever since they broke into their respective first teams.

Of course, it takes a big person to admit he was wrong. On Fletcher, Levein needs to take charge of this situation and get the Wolves man back in the door. This is a saga where, currently, everybody’s losing.