Barca ace is Hearts target

VALDAS IVANAUSKAS today heaped praise on Ibrahim Tall for his goalscoring exploits from the middle of the park but the Hearts head coach has also moved to bring in a new midfielder on trial from Barcelona.

Tall delivered his first competitive strike for the club from an unfamiliar midfield holding role in last night's 3-0 Champions League qualifying victory over Bosnians Siroki Brijeg.

Ivanauskas had been forced into playing the Senegalese with Julien Brellier not fully match fit.

Now, in an effort to increase options in midfield, Ivanauskas and sporting director Eduard Malofeev have targeted Arnau Caldentey, a left-sided player with Barcelona's B side whom the Hearts management team would like to personally assess by bringing him to Riccarton on trial.

Malofeev is understood to have made contact with Nou Camp officials, but the issue has been complicated by the resignation of the entire Barcelona board yesterday, including club president Joan Laporta, ahead of the forthcoming presidential elections at the Spanish club.

Caldentey, 24, is pondering his situation at Barcelona as he waits to hear whether he has a future once a new board of directors has been installed.

Ivanauskas, though, was sufficiently satisfied to see his emergency plan to deploy Tall in front of the back four last night pay dividends. The Lithuanian smiled: "Ibrahim came in and scored, which is great. He almost scored two but I think the first one was an own goal.

"After the Osasuna game last week I spoke with the physios about Brellier and they told me we needed four or five days for him to recover properly from his hamstring. So we needed options.

"Ibrahim did very well. It was not an easy position for him to play but he came in and scored. Overall it is a good result but we know how strong Siroki are in Bosnia. They have very good players, as we have seen on video, and they can be dangerous in their own country.

"We have a very big chance to go through now and we don't expect to lose this tie."

Siroki Brijeg departed Murrayfield somewhat dejected after managing to contain Hearts for the opening 45 minutes, their stifling tactics even bringing a chorus of boos from a minority of home fans as the half-time whistle sounded with the score at 0-0.

Ivica Barbaric, head coach of the Bosnian champions, accepted that his team deserved to lose convincingly in the end after a Carvalho Andre Silva own goal was supplemented by strikes from Tall and Roman Bednar. However, he was left perturbed by the Norwegian referee, Espen Berntsen.

"Hearts are a better, stronger team than us," admitted Barbaric. "But it's also obvious that they scored because of our mistakes.

"We expect to win the second leg but I don't think we will qualify. There were some small mistakes by the referee and he gave Hearts some support. At the first goal, the player who was taking the throw-in [Robbie Neilson] came on to the pitch as his feet stepped over the line."

Meanwhile, midfielder Jamie McAllister is understood to be close to sealing a move to English League One side Bristol City.

Taken from the Scotsman