Hearts fans start to lose patience after Rix is confirmed as coach

GRAHAM BEAN

GRAHAM Rix, a convicted sex offender, will be unveiled today as Hearts' first-team coach in an appointment that threatens to alienate many of the club's supporters.

Rix, 48, met the Hearts players last night and will be presented at a media conference at Tynecastle this afternoon.

The former Arsenal and England midfielder, who has spent six months out of the game after being sacked by Oxford United, will work under a director of football or sporting director in a new management structure at Tynecastle.

His appointment provoked an angry reaction from Hearts supporters concerned about Rix's criminal record. He was convicted in 1999 of unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl and indecent assault, and served six months of a 12-month jail sentence.

Martin Laidlaw, the chairman of the Hearts Supporters Trust, said: "We are extremely unhappy with the news. I appreciate Rix was once a highly-regarded first-team coach but his star and credibility have diminished after what happened outside the game."

Roman Romanov, Hearts' chairman and acting chief executive, said he was comfortable with the appointment, adding that Rix deserved a second chance.

"We made a decision, we are happy," said Romanov, son of the club's majority shareholder, Vladimir Romanov, pictured below.

"I definitely understand how the fans feel. I would ask them to look at his professional career. He achieved a lot with Chelsea. He had problems. I think it's in the past, and every man deserves a second chance. He's hungry to be coach and you can see it in his eyes. He has knowledge and ability to make the players betters and a desire to push Hearts further.

"We are very positive about it. We feel Graham has great energy and ambitions. We made a decision today, the official press conference will take place tomorrow. We are not close to having a director of football, not at the moment."

Rix spent seven years on the coaching staff at Chelsea between 1993 and 2000, during which time the club won the FA Cup (twice), League Cup, European Cup-Winners' Cup, Charity Shield and Super Cup. It was his time at Stamford Bridge that convinced the Romanovs he was the right man for Hearts.

"We looked at the candidates for quite a while," Romanov told heartsfc.co.uk. "We analysed them and thought the best choice would be Graham at the moment. He has a lot of experience with Chelsea. He proved himself there, earning six trophies in three years from 1997-99."

Rix held talks with Vladimir Romanov at the weekend and took in Hearts' 3-0 win over Dundee United at Tynecastle. He talked with the Romanovs again last night and was shown around Hearts' training academy at Riccarton, where he met with the first-team squad. "I'm really pleased to meet the players, I'm very excited about working with them," Rix said. "I saw them play on Saturday, I thought they were excellent, especially in the first half.

"I'm really looking forward to the challenge, a big challenge. It is a massive chance for me and I'm very grateful for the opportunity, I'm determined to make a go of it. As far as I know I will be head coach working under a director of football but obviously there will be a press conference tomorrow, when we will go into more detail.

"I am delighted to have met them, they're a good set of lads and I'm looking forward to working with them."

Rix has struggled to find work since leaving Chelsea. He had a spell in charge of Portsmouth in 2001 but things turned sour when Harry Redknapp joined as director of football, with Redknapp eventually replacing Rix as manager. He then applied for jobs at Livingston and Partick Thistle but was overlooked before taking over at Oxford United last year. He left Oxford in March and has been doing some scouting work for Wolverhampton Wanderers since.

His appointment is another chapter in an extraordinarily turbulent few weeks in Hearts' history which have seen the ousting of the manager, chief executive and chairman by the Lithuanian family now running the club.

The team has been in the charge of caretaker John McGlynn since the departure of manager George Burley last month and McGlynn will work alongside Rix in the short-term at least. Hearts are level with Celtic on points at the top of the Premierleague and won three times and lost once under McGlynn. Since the axing of Burley, Romanov senior has made it clear he wants to change the management structure by bringing in a more senior figure to work with a head coach. There will be a clear division of duties, with the sporting director responsible for scouting and buying players, while the coach works with the players and picks the team.

Roman Romanov explained: "Pretty soon we'll have a sporting director who will make the decisions on the players we need to buy from other clubs. The coach will only be coaching. His job will be to make the players better and the coach will definitely makes the decision on who plays."

Rix's CV suggests he flourishes when he is not the man in charge. He joined Chelsea initially as youth-team coach under Glenn Hoddle's management but was promoted to first-team coach when Ruud Gullit took over and retained the post under Gianluca Vialli. When Vialli was sacked and replaced by Claudio Ranieri, Rix left shortly afterwards.

Ranieri was interviewed for the senior position at Hearts but talks broke down, reportedly due to the Italian's salary demands.

Romanov senior attempted to impose the continental model on the club last season when he brought in Anatoly Byshovets as director of football to work alongside head coach John Robertson. However, Robertson and the former Russia coach failed to hit it off and Robertson left before the season ended.

Taken from the Scotsman