Calderwood blasts Hearts' foreign policy

JIMMY Calderwood insists the whole of Scottish football would benefit if his largely home-produced Aberdeen side were to beat Hearts' multi-national squad to the remaining UEFA Cup slot.

The Pittodrie club's manager has obviously observed the growing nationalist appeal in the political arena and clearly believes that the Scottish Premierleague would benefit from a similarly jingoistic approach in the domestic game.

Calderwood takes his side to Tynecastle tomorrow afternoon looking for the victory that would end a five-year exile from European football for the last Scottish team to triumph in continental competition.

The burden of expectation that glorious history invokes is one reason why fulfilment of that ambition would rank higher with him than getting Dunfermline Athletic into the tournament courtesy of a first Scottish Cup final in over 30 years.

Another is Calderwood's assertion that the vastly superior financial resources of the Old Firm and tomorrow's rivals mean claiming third place in the league is the equivalent of Aberdeen winning silverware nowadays.

It means he can only look on with envy at the money Hearts have spent on assembling their massive squad but insists he isn't jealous of the problems the addition of so many players from abroad have caused at the Tynecastle outfit.

With the sort of forthright expression that guarantees a copy of this article will find it's way onto the Hearts dressing-room wall, Calderwood claims that he would rather work with Scottish players anyway and that an Aberdeen win might influence others to take a similar view towards recruitment of personnel in the future. The Dons manager said: "We will have at least eight or nine Scots in from the start so it would be good for the country.

"It would let people see you can get success if you show more faith in some of our own lads.

"It might inspire other clubs to do the same thing and that would be good for the Scottish game in the long run. I would rather work with Scottish or British players any day.

"I am not being disrespectful to Hearts for bringing in foreign players. They operate on a different level from us budget-wise and it means they have about 50 players now, many of them internationals.

"But this is a hard, hard place for foreigners to come to and some of them struggle to settle here.

"Good players will come through that whereas bad ones fall off. I was talking to [former Hearts midfielder] Paul Hartley recently and he was saying when he was there that there were something like 50 players in their dressing room.

"Although it would be great to have so many options, you can have too much of a good thing. It makes our task on Sunday all the bigger but I'm sure our Scots will relish the challenge."

As rhetoric goes it's maybe not right up there with Mel Gibson in Braveheart but it's sure to prove incendiary ahead of what was already shaping into an explosive occasion as Aberdeen seek a third successive win against their rivals from Edinburgh.

The visitors will be without suspended skipper Russell Anderson but Calderwood was always certain Hearts midfielder Laryea Kingston would not be equally inconvenienced tomorrow.

The Ghanaian has appealed the additional three-game suspension handed out for abusing the referee when he was red carded in the last clash between the sides at Pittodrie in March.

That means he will be free to face Aberdeen and, while Calderwood called on the authorities to close such loopholes, he added: "I can't say it is a surprise. Let's put it like this, he has always been in their plans.

"The only surprise is I expected them to appeal in late afternoon and they did it in the morning which was good as we found out earlier.

"That is the way things go, although the powers that be have got to look at the regulations about certain things and make other rules.

"At the moment, there are too many grey areas in these kind of situations and they are being exploited. Hearts are entitled to do what they have done and we just have to get on with things."

Andrew Considine will return in central defence to replace Anderson and, with a visit to Celtic Park and a visit from bitter rivals Rangers still to come, Calderwood wants Aberdeen to avoid a nerve shredding finale to the season.

He said: "Tynecastle is a very difficult place to go to but it would be good to go there and beat them to show we are the third-best team in Scotland.

"I don't care if they hammer us and we score in the last minute to sneak it 1-0 but we had the chances to clinch this thing by now and it would be good if we could finish it in our favour on Sunday."