Hearts fans should heed the Maxwell precedent

Cometh the hour of impending oblivion, cometh the tycoon. It is always the way in football and, straightforward benefactors apart, owners run the gamut of prototypes from Chaplin to Caligula via Cagney.

What else could unite Michael Knighton, Doug Ellis, Bernard Tapie, Silvio Berlusconi, Jesus Gil and Georgi Iliev? Georgi, in case you missed his obituaries, was president of Lokomitiv Plovdiv until 40 minutes after his team qualified for the Uefa Cup in August, at which point he was capped, not by his country but by a sniper. Something to do with his dealings in the Bulgarian marching powder market, it seems.

Fantasy football was a fact as soon as the game went professional. At that point the now traditional greeting of fan and player to new owner - "How much you got, then?" - was first uttered. Emotional IOU notes, in the form of bombastic promises, became transferable currency; they still buy goodwill and credulity - for a time.

Robert Maxwell (Oxford United, Derby County) instinctively understood that a spoonful of proven achievement helps the deception go down. He did, after all, win the Military Cross for charging a German stronghold in Maas in 1945.

Newspapers, like football clubs, frequently attract such characters and Maxwell tried his apprentice hand on the Scottish Daily News, a workers' co-operative which emerged in the mid-Seventies after the Daily Express ran down its substantial base in Glasgow. Tony Benn persuaded the Labour Government of the day to match the workers' investment of their redundancy cheques, but the money ran out swiftly, allowing Maxwell in. However, he was soon regarded as an arch manipulator who duped the workforce with hollow promises.

The quandary for Hearts fans amid all the turbulence at the club is at once simple and complex. Who to believe? Vladimir Romanov, whose investment helped their team lead the Scottish league after an unprecedented start to the season? Or George Burley, George Foulkes and Phil Anderton, ejected as manager, chairman and chief executive and united in their view that Romanov is an intolerant autocrat?

There are similarities between Maxwell and Romanov. Both were born in eastern Europe - Maxwell (real name Jan Ludvik Hoch) in Czechoslovakia and Romanov in Russia - and had deprived upbringings.

Maxwell cited his service in the British Army, Romanov in the Red Navy. Each made his fortune from opportunistic exploitation of the collapse of established European order - Maxwell after the defeat of Hitler's Germany, Romanov following the fall of the Soviet Union. Maxwell installed his son, Kevin, as chairman of Oxford United; Roman Romanov is now chairman of Hearts.

One cannot make assumptions about Vladimir Romanov based on such parallels, but fans of Oxford United and Derby will recognise the bewilderment of Hearts supporters when presented with a provenance they cannot easily verify.

And there is another rule of the game that every prospective owner, including Vladimir Romanov, should heed - the best way to make a small fortune from a football club is to start with a large one.

Taken from telegraph.co.uk