Calderwood admits Murray link to get Dunfermline job
Calderwood was a guest on Radio Scotland’s Off the Ball programme hosted by Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan when he explained the unusual circumstances that took him from Holland to East End Park in 1999.
Cowan immediately seized on the comment but so far no one at Radio Scotland has deemed the comments newsworthy.
Calderwood made the revelation when the programme was discussing the financial crisis at Dunfermline which sees the First Division club under threat of liquidation.
In 1999 Dick Advocaat was the manager of Rangers with some speculation that he’d bring in Calderwood to his backroom staff with both men having previously managed in Holland.
Recalling Murray’s phone call Calderwood said: “I’ve got a friend at Dunfermline we want you to go in there.”
Calderwood took Dunfermline to promotion to the SPL and stayed with the club until resigning in 2004 to take over as Aberdeen manager.
At the end of the 2002/03 season Celtic’s Chris Sutton was suspended for comments implying that Dunfermline hadn’t given their all in a 6-1 defeat to Rangers in the final game of the season.
“I think everybody could have virtually predicted the result at Ibrox before kick-off – well, many people did,” Sutton said. “We knew they’d lie down – and they have.”
Dunfermline reacted angrily to those comments and at one stage threatened Sutton with legal action
Pars chairman John Yorkson said: “Sutton has been given every opportunity to disassociate himself from the comments but he hasn’t. Does that mean he still believes it’s true?
“It appears there’s a culture at Celtic that if anything goes against them a conspiracy theory comes out. The best thing now would be a full retraction and that would kill it stone dead.
“Otherwise, there isn’t a lot we can do unless we go to the courts for defamation and that is something we would prefer not to do. We have referred the comment to the Scottish Football Association and any disciplinary action will be taken by them.”
Managerial appointments are often made on friendly recommendations with Alex Ferguson’s opinion sought by many clubs before they appoint new managers.
It probably isn’t much of a priority for Dunfermline at the moment but perhaps the club could explain why the chairman of another club was used to make the initial contact for the recruitment of their manager.
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Calderwood was a guest on Radio Scotland’s Off the Ball programme hosted by Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan when he explained the unusual circumstances that took him from Holland to East End Park in 1999.