Sudden removal of Anderton plunges club into uncertainty

STUART BATHGATE

WHEN George Burley left Hearts because of "irreconcilable differences" with Vladimir Romanov, most fans were just about able to tolerate it.

Hearts were top of the league, and, for every person who said it was all down to Burley, there was another who argued that without the Lithuanian businessman's cash neither the manager nor any of the new players would have been recruited.

A modicum of stability was restored as, under the temporary charge of John McGlynn, Hearts beat first Dunfermline and then Kilmarnock to take their unbeaten league run to a dozen games. When that run was ended at Easter Road on Saturday, there were some who felt the wheels had fallen off, but others reasoned that defeat had to come some time. With the arrival of a highly-rated manager apparently imminent, figures at the club, chief executive Phil Anderton among them, insisted it was time to keep a cool head.

That time surely came to an end yesterday. The search for a new manager is in disarray, and those in the running may well think again about becoming involved with a man who has exercised utter ruthlessness to remove key employees since taking majority control of the club 12 days ago.

Those fans who were mollified by the confidentiality agreement between Hearts and Burley will not be fobbed off a second time. They will want answers, and it will need an experienced diplomat at Tynecastle to deal with them. But the enforced departure of George Foulkes has stripped the club of the only person who could fulfil that role.

Had Foulkes stayed, even the loss of the chief executive ten days after the departure of the manager might have been stomached. The Labour peer, after all, is a man accustomed throughout his political career to making uneasy accommodations. During his 18 months as Hearts chairman he was faced with some of the most trying situations of his career as he battled against Chris Robinson to keep the club at Tynecastle.

But Romanov apparently not only felt able to do without that expertise, he actually felt that Foulkes had not done well enough in his time at the club. Or, perhaps, thought that his son could do better.

Anderton had earned respect for his marketing methods, but Foulkes is widely accepted to have played a critical role in the salvation of the club.

That role - indeed, all of his efforts since April of last year - was dismissed last night in one sentence attributed to Romanov. Foulkes had failed to do what had been required of him in "the year" he had been with Hearts. So, too, had Anderton in "the year" he had been in office.

Foulkes, as we have said, was there for a year and a half; Anderton for just about eight months.

If a board member or her spokesperson can get such basic details wrong, can we trust her to have her finger on the pulse about other matters connected with the club? Indeed, the question to be asked now, as a matter of urgency, is can we trust anyone who remains on the Tynecastle board?

Since the early days of his involvement with Hearts, Vladimir Romanov has spoken of his grand vision for the club. Much of it may have seemed so idealistic as to provoke scepticism, but so far at least he has accumulated a good track record of keeping his promises.

He said that, while he was not sure where the club should be based in the longer term, his immediate intent was to keep the team playing at Tynecastle. He kept his word, and the talk now is not where Hearts will be playing, but how great a capacity they will be playing to, as the club deliberate between rebuilding the main stand and raising the maximum attendance to 24,000, and undertaking a reconstruction of the whole place to take the capacity up to somewhere around 37,000. At the weekend, Romanov spoke of a longer-term vision of building a 60,000-capacity stadium.

Romanov also said, in one of his early pronouncements, that he would find the money to attract top-class players to the club. There were some who refused to believe him, especially when Hearts would not even cough up £300,000 to sign Lee Miller from Bristol City, but again, the Baltic businessman was right.

The first signs of what he was doing came when Saulius Mikoliunas, Deividas Cesnauskis and Marius Kizys joined the club from Lithuania. Kizys has since moved on, and the other two have not played as big a part on the field this season as they did last, but their arrival was nonetheless tangible evidence of Romanov's ability to deliver.

Edgaras Jankauskas, Takis Fyssas, Rudi Skacel, Julien Brellier and several others have also arrived - as, too, did the since-departed Burley, another individual who would not have considered moving to Hearts had it not been for Romanov persuading him that the club was going places and that it would be an exciting venture to be part of.

Under Burley, those new recruits blended with the Scottish core of the team remarkably quickly.

Bizarrely, what has been achieved so quickly on the field could be undone with greater speed.

Even if a new manager takes over today, several key players are clearly unsettled. They have become insecure because they do not know what is happening at the club, and an insecure player will never perform anywhere close to his best.

Romanov and his associates on the board will have to build bridges with those players, but just as importantly they will also have to restore relations with the club's supporters. At present, the majority shareholder is giving the impression of acting impulsively, which will lead fans to ask: if he can dismiss managers and directors at a whim after going out of his way to recruit them, how easily might he change his mind about key matters concerning the future of the club?

As the owner of more than 55 per cent of the club's shareholding, Romanov can do what he wants. And that includes the sale of Tynecastle, should he ever grow tired of his investment.

But a football club cannot be treated in the way he might deal with his aluminium and textile interests, without alienating the supporters he needs to fill an expanded Tynecastle. If Romanov does not recognise that, Hearts will be torn apart by the sort of bitter conflict which everyone hoped was over when Chris Robinson quit the scene.

Taken from the Scotsman