Romanov criticism of trio may result in legal action

VLADIMIR Romanov may face legal action as a result of criticism of Phil Anderton, George Burley and George Foulkes made in a television documentary.

It is believed that the comments of Hearts' majority shareholder are considered actionable by the three men - respectively the former chief executive, team manager and non-executive chairman of the Tynecastle club - and that at least one of them is giving serious consideration to a lawsuit.

This would be on the grounds of having his reputation impugned by his former employer. Romanov's remarks, widely reported in the press yesterday, were made during filming of a BBC Scotland film, The Romanov Revolution, broadcast last night.

The Lithuanian banker, who has a controlling interest in Hearts with a 55 per cent shareholding he hopes to extend to outright ownership, claimed that Anderton, Burley and Foulkes "didn't have the elementary human qualities" and that "each day they turned up at the club it was doing it harm".

It was when pressed on whether that meant the potential death of the club that he added: "We would have got to the burial of the club very quickly and every day these people were present at the club was damaging it."

The news that Burley had been removed from the manager's job broke on Saturday, 22 October, just hours before Hearts were due to meet Dunfermline in a Bank of Scotland Premierleague match at Tynecastle.

Soon after, Anderton was sacked as chief executive amid accusations that he was not making satisfactory progress with plans to redevelop the stadium. That was followed almost immediately by Foulkes quitting in protest.

The sequence of departures - particularly that of Burley - followed by the appointment of Romanov's son, Roman, as acting chief executive and chairman, gave rise to unease among Hearts supporters over the direction in which the club was heading under the Lithuanian influence.

Like many self-made millionaires, Vladimir Romanov seems to deal in extremes when it comes to words and actions, the latter including a tendency to try to make others in his own image. It is not uncommon for such successful types to consider as unexceptional some demands made on employees that could be construed by others as excessive.

In this regard, perhaps his verbal slaughtering of Anderton, Burley and Foulkes is not entirely surprising. But it is not difficult to see that, in certain instances, his harsh words do not square with events at the club during the tenure of the departed trio.

In the case of Burley, the criticism seems especially bizarre, even contradictory and nonsensical. At one point in the television interview, Romanov said: "I gave these people full control to direct the club and in one year there was no result, not even a thought as to where we were going."

As far as the team under Burley's guidance was concerned, the destination could not have been more clearly defined: it was the top of the league on the back of eight victories in as many matches from the start of the campaign, a position they held until the week after the manager was ushered out, when they lost to Hibs at Easter Road.

At the time of Burley's waygoing, Hearts were still unbeaten after their opening ten league matches, having drawn 1-1 at Celtic Park a week earlier. It is impossible to imagine what more, short of an extremely unreasonable maximum points from every outing, Romanov could have asked.

Recent media reports claimed that Romanov, while searching for a replacement for Burley, had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the former manager to return. Attempts to establish the veracity of the story have elicited varying degrees of "confirmation". But the claim has never been denied by Romanov or any of his associates and, if true, it would seriously weaken - indeed, render inadmissible - the Lithuanian's accusations of failure against Burley and the insistence that his presencewas harmful to the club.

Romanov's prime complaint about Anderton and Foulkes centred on the allegation that they had rather dragged their feet in the matter of advancing the proposed redevelopment of Tynecastle, with particular emphasis on the lack of progress in dealings with Edinburgh City Council. But it was learned yesterday that Foulkes had been asked by Romanov to take a personal interest in the project only on 7 August, the day of the first derby match with Hibernian at Tynecastle. In the weeks that followed, it was claimed, Foulkes and Anderton had talked to a substantial number of commercial interests with a view to snaring financial support.

Foulkes was also the non-executive (ie, unpaid) chairman, but found himself working three days a week for the club. Romanov's disparaging remarks about the politician also do not sit comfortably beside Foulkes's revelation after his departure that the major shareholder had spent hours trying to talk him out of quitting. This exercise apparently included Romanov's enlisting as additional "persuaders" his personal PR man as well as other advisers, including lawyers. It would appear that Hearts' trials of the past six weeks may not yet be over

Taken from the Scotsman