Tony Docherty says in-form Dundee striker Simon Murray deserves Scotland call

Tony Docherty believes free-scoring Dundee striker Simon Murray should receive international recognition.

The uncapped 33-year-old netted both goals against St Mirren to secure a vital 2-0 home victory for the second-bottom Dark Blues in their battle to stay up.

Murray’s goal tally for the season now stands at 21, with 15 of them coming in the league – the same as Celtic’s Daizen Maeda at the top of the William Hill Premiership scoring charts.

And Docherty insists Dundee-born Murray, who struck in the second and 63rd minutes, should be considered for a Scotland call-up.

The manager said: “Simon is a pivotal player in the team. I said before about possible international recognition and why not?

“He’s the highest-scoring Scottish player in the league right now. Every opportunity he gets, he scores.

“That second goal today was a really tough finish.

“Simon is grounded, he’ll keep going the way he’s going.”

Dundee’s win moves them to within a point of Ross County and Kilmarnock above them, and eight points above St Johnstone in bottom spot.

Docherty acknowledged the importance of the win especially after last week’s demoralising last-gasp 4-3 loss to Rangers.

He said: “That showed the real mentality of the group. Last week was tough, losing a last-minute goal.

“It was a tough week in terms of building the players up, getting confidence back, but when you see them starting a game like that it shows the mentality of the group.

“They put that disappointment behind them and attack the next game.

“Huge credit to the players and the biggest thing for me was keeping the clean sheet.”

St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson could not hide his frustration that his side took nothing from the game with the result putting a major dent in their top-six hopes.

Robinson lamented the fact his side conceded so early on and then failed to take advantage of numerous chances of their own.

He said: “We didn’t have enough quality in the final third. We spoke about how fast Dundee would start.

“We didn’t manage that well, it’s stating the obvious.

“But from then we were in control of the game, 62 per cent possession, numerous opportunities to score goals that we didn’t take. But we lacked quality when we needed it in front of goal and our deliveries into the box.

“The stats that matter are scoring goals. Dundee scored two and we scored none out of all that domination in certain areas.

“We make individual errors as well but nobody sets out to do that. So I’m certainly not going to criticise them for that. We had enough opportunities to get something out of the game.

“It’s frustrating at our start because it puts us in an uphill task straight away.”