SOCCER:Many have questioned Keith Treacy's commitment to the green in the past, but he has shown recently it's no longer an issue, writes EMMET MALONE

THESE ARE volatile times for the financial markets and yet there can be few stocks in London, Frankfurt or New York that seem to hurtle up and down with quite the speed or regularity of young Keith Treacy’s. Some commodities are always in demand, though, and having pace and a keen eye for goal in his portfolio seems set to make the Preston North End star rated a “buy” amongst Championship clubs again this summer.

A star in the making, it seems, since his early teens at Belvedere, the Dubliner has already captured the hearts of a few British club managers during his short career to date. The problem is that he has a tendency to quickly drift out of their affections too.

Tomorrow, as the Republic of Ireland take on Scotland in the Carling Nations Cup, the 22-year-old is aiming to catch another club boss’s eye. With Preston, who he joined in February of last year for around €200,000, having just been relegated to League One he is, unofficially, on the market again and Burnley are already reported to have had a bid of around €900,000 turned down.

A little over a million is reckoned to be closer to the asking price and Ipswich Town and Nottingham Forest are rumoured to be considering bids of that order but the Dubliner says he doesn’t know what it will take to get Phil Brown to sell. The manager has told him that the club has a figure in mind and that if they get that then he can go.

“We had a meeting and he’s just put a price on my head and said, if it gets met, all well and good, we won’t hold you back,” says the winger whose career in England has already involved a lengthy spell at Blackburn as well much shorter ones at Stockport County and Sheffield United.

“We’ll have to wait and see now if a club is interested or what’s going to happen but I’m hopeful, yeah, because I want to play at the highest level I possibly can,” he adds.

“I feel maybe the Championship or the Premiership at a push would be ideal for me. I think I’m a little bit better than League One if I’m being honest.”

Brown thought so too not long after succeeding Darren Ferguson at Deepdale, with the former Hull City boss enthusiastically telling the local papers that the Irishman had the ability to be a regular in the top flight. The defensive side of the player’s game soon became an issue in a team scrapping for Championship survival, however, and having been left out and then injured for spells, the manager replaced him just 28 minutes into the defeat by Ipswich towards the end of the campaign, describing his “lack of interest” afterwards as “unacceptable”.

The perception that he doesn’t always put in the required “shift” has dogged him really since his early days at Ewood Park. He says only Paul Ince rated him at the Premier League club and that Sam Allardyce never gave him “a fair crack of the whip”.

The suggestion that he might have been the victim of an injustice is hardly supported, however, by the fact that an initially highly successful six-month loan at Sheffield United in late 2009 was, in the end, cut short after he had drifted completely out of the manager’s reckoning.

Preston stepped in and even if, as he admits, “he is just not the best of defenders”, they appear to have a decent return on what was a modest investment. Despite his occasional problems, he ended the season as the club’s second most regular starter and its second top scorer. Throw in nine assists over the course of the campaign and, for good measure, the supporters’ “goal of the season” against Crystal Palace last October (a particularly spectacular example of his speciality long range efforts) and it is hard to see why there isn’t a queue of managers forming outside Brown’s Deepdale office.

On the Republic of Ireland front, things are less straightforward. Treacy has done well enough in his three senior appearances to date, particularly the first against Argentina last August when he replaced Keith Fahey in the second half and significantly livened up the attacking side of the team’s game down the left flank.

A month later he caused controversy by making himself unavailable for the competitive games against Russia and Slovakia and was quoted, a little unfortunately, saying that he would put his “feet up and relax” rather than answering Giovanni Trapattoni’s call-up.

He, his family and Preston all subsequently insisted he had had a succession of minor injuries that necessitated the withdrawal but Don Givens, with whom he had falling out during his Under-21 days, was again critical of his attitude.

“Unfortunately Keith has a lot of talent, but his discipline and dedication to the game doesn’t match the talent,” said the former Republic of Ireland striker.

“The willingness or the enthusiasm to put on the green jersey is always vital to me. I see it as one of our strong points – our commitment to the cause has always been very good to us – and when I see somebody who is lacking; that I find it hard to accept.

“And Keith, for whatever his reasons are or the excuses he comes up with, is lacking that thing which is basic whether you’re earning £200 a week or £20,000 a week, if you don’t want to put on that green shirt, don’t bother coming son.”

Eight months on, though, he is in Dublin when so many others have opted to stay away.

Notionally, there is the chance that he will play his way into the side for the European Championship qualifier in Skopje next week but in reality he remains well down queue in what is probably Trapattoni’s strongest department and admits he is probably playing a longer game.

“I’ve been in direct competition with Damien (Duff),” he says, pointing out the reason for his relatively limited opportunities at this level to date.

“He’s injured at the moment so hopefully I can just play well on Sunday and put a thought in Trap’s mind for the qualifier.”

“If I play well on Sunday – that’s if I do even play – if I play well, it’s just about trying to put thoughts in Trap’s mind that I’m another option and maybe I could get a few minutes.”

Even without Duff, though, Aiden McGeady, Stephen Hunt, Liam Lawrence and Séamus Coleman are all set to be competing for the two wide spots against Macedonia and so his chances, he admits, are not great.

“I’m a bit unlucky in that to be honest,” he says. “But that’s the way it is. I have got time on my side at the minute. I just need to keep playing and keep trying to play well for Ireland and play well for my club next season, whoever that is. We’ll see where that takes me.”