Can Calderwood succeed where Steve Paterson failed?

Calderwood, who by his own admission was unknown in Scotland outside his own house when he took over as Dunfermline manager, has built a reputation for putting together adventurous, attacking sides.

His football education is heavily influenced by the home of Total Football - the Netherlands - and his emphasis on attractive football bears that out.

The Dutch influence comes from a period of almost two decades spent there as a player and a coach before his return to his native Scotland in 1999.

Having played in England for Birmingham City and Cambridge United, he moved to the Netherlands in 1980 where he enjoyed undistinguished spells at Sparta Rotterdam, Willem II, Roda JC and Heracles as a player.

A move into coaching seemed a natural step to a student of the game like Calderwood and he embarked on a self-financed seven-year Uefa coaching course at a personal cost of �25,000.

His coaching career began with FC Zwolle, although while working as assistant manager there, he also managed to guide Third Division amateur side FC Rietvogels to the brink of promotion to the Second Division.

He moved on to Willem II before taking the manager's job at NEC Nijmegen, which is where Dunfermline came calling to buy him out of his contract almost five years ago.

Since then, Calderwood, along with trusty assistant Jimmy Nicholl, has steadily raised the Fife club's stock, taking them from the First Division to Europe and their first Scottish Cup final in over 30 years.

Calderwood on his first day as Aberdeen manager

His departure for Pittodrie came about as a result of the belief that he had taken the cash-strapped club as far as he could.

The question is, can he succeed where Steve Paterson and Ebbe Skovdahl failed by taking Aberdeen to similar heights to the ones he reached with Dunfermline?

Paterson's method of combining young talent with players who had proved their worth in the First Division was unsuccessful, so Calderwood will have to bring in his own players.

He has already been warned that he will have no transfer budget, although Aberdeen may be able to provide a better salary structure to tempt out-of-contract players to the club.

Calderwood may also feel that Aberdeen's young squad shows more potential for growth than Dunfermline's relatively older pool of players.

Nonetheless, he has taken a massive gamble in taking on a job that has seen a number of casualties in recent times when he could have landed an English First Division manager's post in time.