Stuart Pearce Keeping Tabs On Driver

England Under 21 coach Stuart Pearce has confirmed that he was in attendance at Tynecastle last Saturday to keep tabls on Hearts winger Andy Driver.

Pearce has apparently had Driver watched on a few occasions over the past couple of seasons, and clearly wanted to see him in the flesh on the back of some favourable recent reports of his performances. He said:

‘Yes I was at Tynecastle on Saturday to watch Andrew Driver.

‘It is the third time I have seen him play. Any player who is playing first team football in a top league is on my radar. I do my job thoroughly and get on planes to go wherever it takes to see players.

‘He’s a young lad who is in the age group and doing well for his club.’

Not really the words that you’d expect from a guy who was famed for being a ‘no-nonsense’ defender in his days as a player, so clearly the world of football management is not exempt from the sort of
buzzword tosh that many of us have to put up with from Exec-wannabe’s in offices on a regular basis! ‘On my radar’ indeed!

Still, it’s good news for Hearts that another of their players is attracting such interest, even if Driver did sadly have a bit of an ‘off’ day on Saturday against Rangers. Hopefully in the coming weeks he’ll be able to reproduce the sort of form that we saw from him in the Falkirk game the week before and also the derby at Easter Road – if he can do that with Pearce in attendance in the future, then he’ll have every chance of getting into that England squad.