Hearts 1 - 0 Aberdeen

ROB ROBERTSON at Tynecastle January 31 2005
NOEL Whelan is becoming a liability to Aberdeen. For an experienced striker, his behaviour against Hearts was ill-advised to say the least and caused his own manager more problems than it did the home defence.

The striker has always been short-tempered but the fact Jimmy Calderwood had to haul him off before the player was sent off was an indication of his disruptive influence.

He gave away the penalty which Dennis Wyness scored to give Hearts victory and did his cause little favours with his post-match comments. It certainly looked like a penalty and the Aberdeen coach was gracious enough to accept the decision unlike Whelan, who was substituted a minute after conceding the spot-kick.

"We never got going in the first half, but in the end we were beaten by a cheat," said Whelan, who was taken off with 27 minutes remaining. Calderwood later admitted his player's body shape was wrong when he made his clumsy challenge on Steven Pressley, the Hearts captain, but Whelan was less forgiving.

"Pressley's performance was disgusting and he went down in the box after little contact," said Whelan. "He had done it throughout the game both in defence and then in our box, he always gets decisions and fools the referee and he got another one against us.

"The referee had been terrible all day, it's hard enough to play against 11, but it's impossible to play against 12 when the referee is on their side."

Pressley's reaction was to make clear he thought it was a penalty. "Noel is entitled to his opinion, but I have pride in the way I play and my way I have done during my career," he said.

Calderwood, who also called Pressley a "diver" yesterday, clearly has a problem with his team. Their performance on Saturday made you wonder what the recent hype has been about. They were dreadful but, then again, so were Hearts.

Apart from the penalty the only other talking point was a Steven Craig effort which was ruled out five minutes from time for offside, a decision Calderwood called "unbelievable".

Not that Hearts were bothered. It was a vital win which took them ahead of Aberdeen and into fourth. Next on the agenda is the Tynecastle saga.

The Herald understands the club's board will back plans by Vladimir Romanov, the Lithuanian businessman, to pull out of a deal to sell the ground to Cala Homes for £22m, when they meet later this week.

Taken from the Herald