SCOTT McDONALD fessed up to me yesterday. “I’ve been an arrogant s*** at times,” said the Motherwell striker. In part, it may be this opinionated, edgy quality that has driven McDonald to various highs and lows in a still meandering career.

Even now, back at Motherwell and feeling contented, McDonald acknowledges that a part of his career has seemed slightly derailed.

“Me being me, and where I think I should be right now, I definitely think I should be playing at a higher level,” he says. “Right now – aged 31, 32 – I should be in the prime years of my career. But for some reason things never kicked on as much as I would have liked.”

Right, so why is this?

“People still think I am playing as a centre-forward. But the last couple of years in my career I’ve been playing as a midfielder. People ask me, ‘where have the goals gone?’ but everything has changed.

“So many teams – even Celtic now – have gone to playing just one striker up front. To be a single No.9 in football today, managers look for a bit more physicality, a bit more stature. So I’ve found myself playing more in midfield, though not through choice.”

At 16, having grown up in Melbourne and come through the Australian institute of sport system, McDonald was still feeling just a boy when his father, John, originally from Glasgow, told him: “Leave home now. You’ve got to go to Europe for your football career. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” Feeling “a bit frightened" McDonald thus first set foot in England, at Southampton FC, to begin a remarkable odyssey.

At 20, and after a seeming failure to make the grade, he was all set to quit Europe and go home. “I was on the football scrapheap. Back in 2003 I was thinking: ‘I’ve had enough, I want to go home.’ But then big Davie McPherson persuaded me to come up to Motherwell for a trial, and Terry Butcher saw something in me and signed me after two days’ training. Terry gave me that belief and confidence and I never looked back, it was the trigger for everything.”

Intriguingly, during his first three-year stint at Motherwell, McDonald experienced almost precisely what Scott Allan at Hibs is currently facing. In January 2007 Rangers bid £450,000 for the striker, but Motherwell knocked it back. McDonald was furious.

“To say I gave Maurice Malpas, the Motherwell manager, a bit of grief was an understatement. At that stage I didn’t know if I’d ever get another opportunity to play at that level again – to go and win trophies, to play in Europe. All these things were in my mind.

“But, just like the Scott Allan situation, if the club isn’t willing to play ball, then you’re not going to sit there as a young footballer and say, ‘right, I’m doing nothing, I’m not playing anymore.’ As soon as that 2007 transfer window closed I scored in our first game after it and won the man of the match. I just got on with it.

“But that episode made Celtic act, in terms of getting me. Just a few months later, in the March, I agreed terms to go to Celtic, and that was it. Gordon Strachan, the man who had released me at Southampton, had bought me for Celtic.”

McDonald was Celtic’s leading scorer for two seasons, but Strachan then left, Tony Mowbray arrived, and the writing was soon on the wall for the little striker. Mowbray, infamously, didn’t really rate McDonald, and their relationship became a factor in both mean leaving Celtic sooner than either would have wished.

“I never saw myself leaving Celtic as quickly as I did. I was scoring goals but then Tony spent a lot of money on Marc-Antoine Fortune, and it is hard not to play someone that you have spent a lot of money on. One day at Celtic Park I also overheard a conversation between Marc and Tony that I wasn’t meant to hear, so I knew where I stood from that day onwards, put it that way.

“I don’t think Tony played his cards right at all when he came to Celtic. We had a pretty good team but he came in and basically tried to cut away more than half of it. That’s what it felt like for a lot of us, and that’s why it all went dramatically wrong very quickly for Tony.”

In his last game for Celtic, when Mowbray threw McDonald on as a substitute against Rangers in a 1-1 draw, an incident captured his Celtic career demise.

“Yep, people saw that,” he says. “On the pitch Davie Weir said to me, ‘why were you not playing from the start?’ I said, ‘go and ask the guy over there’, pointing at Mowbray. I left the club soon after that.

“There was no big fall-out between me and Tony. If I saw Tony tomorrow I’d shake his hand and would love to catch up with him. But if someone is not willing to see you as a good player, how are you meant to react? I had been the top scorer at Celtic for the previous two years, but then I had a manager that made it plain he didn’t really rate you. How do you respond to that?”

Now back at Motherwell, McDonald says he feels content. “I might have gone elsewhere over the summer, but this is right for me right now. My family being settled is important to me. I also feel respected in Scottish football. I like the scene here.”