Danny Swanson: Scottish football is underrated
Hearts midfielder Danny Swanson has called for Scotland to learn from England and promote its football better.
Swanson signed for Hearts in September following spells at Peterborough and Coventry and has seen a marked difference in how each country sells its game, despite admitting standards have dipped slightly since his Dundee United days.
"Without Rangers, that's going to happen," said Swanson, whose team host Hamilton in the Ladbrokes Premiership on Saturday.
"The thing I have noticed coming back is that more teams try to play good football, which is good to see.
"I think it has dropped a little bit since I first came through, but teams are trying to play and there are a lot of younger players coming through.
"It's definitely not as bad as people try to make out. I think that's the problem. When I came up I noticed the difference in how negative people are towards the game compared to England.
"There were some terrible games but no matter what, they tried to find positives. That's what we need to do up here, make the game sound better because it's not as bad as people make out.
"There are a lot of good players here, as you see when they go down to England, they do well. It's very underrated.
"You watch some English games on the TV and they are always positive, but here some of the commentators aren't as enthusiastic. People down there look at the game and say 'it's not great up there' and I'm trying to argue my point but there are so many people against me.
"I don't know exactly how we do it but we need to find a way to sell it to other people."
Hearts will again be without Jamie Walker for the Hamilton clash. The midfielder is undergoing therapy on a knee injury,but is expected to be fit after the international break.
Blazej Augustyn returns from suspension and Miguel Pallardo (Achilles) is expected to make it but centre-back Alim Ozturk (hernia) remains out and striker Soufian El Hassnaoui is still building up his fitness after a knee injury.
Hamilton midfielder Ali Crawford is relishing his first start at Tynecastle.
Crawford spent six years in the youth ranks at Hearts before being released aged 15. He played one of his first senior games at Tynecastle aged 18 but it was a brief appearance.
"I have only played there once," he said. "It was a good few years ago when Billy Reid was manager. I only came on for the last 10 minutes or so but even then it was still a good experience.
"The atmosphere is electric and they are flying now so there will be a big crowd there.
"We have already beaten them this season so hopefully we can go there and take points off them again."
Darian MacKinnon and Lucas Tagliapietra return from suspension for the visitors, but Grant Gillespie is banned.
Danny Redmond stepped up his recovery from a hamstring injury by playing the first half of the 4-0 development league win over Rangers, but is not expected to feature at Tynecastle.
Darren Lyon will be out for about six weeks following knee surgery while Michael Devlin (ankle) also remains out.
Source: PAR
