Roman off

By Chick Young
BBC Scotland football correspondent

It's up there, you know, with Maurice Johnston signing for Rangers, with the messy death of Third Lanark and with anything else that has shocked the football nation over the last 100 years.

Events at Tynecastle before Vladimir Romanov strolled into town were scandalous enough. Now they are downright jawdropping.

By comparison, the Chris Robinson years, when boardroom machinations thundered on and the chairman was forced to sneak out the back door to avoid baying crowds and managers couldn't wait to get out of the place by the front, have paled into insignificance.

Heart of Midlothian aren't a football club. They are a news agency.

Their tales of mystery and imagination have wiped the Old Firm off the back pages - and the front.

And my avowed ambition is to get through five minutes of broadcasting without some kind of reference to their soap opera existence.

Hearts owner Vladmir Romanov
Major shareholder Vladimir Romanov has to deliver to the fans
What on earth is going on?

Every rubbish football movie I have ever seen - and there have been plenty from "Shot At Glory" to the current nonsense called "Goal" - has produced an unbelievable script.

Except that, had some writer wandered into a production office with the story of Heart of Midlothian, he would have been laughed out of the place. You couldn't have made it up.

George Burley evaporated from Edinburgh on Friday after a row with Vladimir Romanov and returned to his adopted home town of Ipswich, from where, incidentally, he refused to flit throughout his brief tenure in Edinburgh.

He might as well have returned to Brig o' Doon.

Burley knows plenty that the Hearts fans would love to hear.

And the non-event statement from George Foulkes on Saturday night was a joke.

George is a lovely man, but he is blessed with an incredible talent to keep talking until he finds something to say.

The chairman was on BBC Radio Scotland's "90 Minutes" programme on Friday night talking about Romanov's attempt to de-list the club from the Stock Exchange and declaring that Hearts had the best manager in the country.

In truth, Burley had by then - it was just after six o'clock in the evening - been sacked after a lunchtime row with the club's major shareholder.

Former Hearts manager George Burley
Former manager George Burley left the club on Friday
Clearly, even the chairman didn't know what was going on and, if he doesn't, what chance do the fans have?

I was cynical from day one about the input of Romanov. I just didn't get the agenda or his motives.

But the incredible success of his team battered me - and my fellow cynics - into the corner.

In truth, I suspect I am back off the ropes asking questions about his whole involvement.

Of course, Romanov could yet raise the stakes.

It would be folly to write him off given what he has achieved since January. And billionaires have a way about them that normal mortals can't quite seem to grasp.

But now Hearts HAVE to win the league.

If they don't, their supporters - to a man and woman - will always say: "What would have happened had Burley stayed on?" And only one man will take the blame.

Taken from the BBC