Raeburn's brush colours Romanov's rant

As a consequence of the match reports which thronged these pages this week, some readers may not be acquainted with the latest vapourings of Hearts' colourful Lithuanian owner, Vladimir Romanov, who decided to issue a festive homily in the pages of Hearts' matchday programme for the Boxing Day meeting with Falkirk.

Alongside a photograph of Romanov, fetchingly shoeless on a distant strand, appeared the following text: "Dear Supporters, Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all of you! I wish you beautiful football and new amazing victories in the coming 2006 year! Even the most sacred places on this earth, the places that house the remains of Christ, are blighted by profiteers and money-grabbers.

"Likewise, in the football world, which is sacred for those who love football, there are also those - be they agents, journalists, jealous hangers-on or other wunderkind - who seek to ruin all that is good about the game.

"But it is the Devil that is driving them forward and they are not going to stop. All that will remain for me is to step aside and bid them farewell on their road to Hell!"

If, as a probable product of Satan's spawn, one may express an opinion on these sentiments, it must first be said that they represent a vivid variation on the usual anodyne pabulum employed to pad out the editorial content of such publications. Too much so for some at Tynecastle, evidently, because there were attempts to persuade Romanov to mute his preaching tendencies.

It must have been dislocating, certainly, to see Christ mentioned in the context of Christmas, never mind football, a conjunction liable to scare off the more timid sponsors. However, it is also a splendid illustration of the power of wealth.

Imagine Vlad as an indigent, stationed outside Tynecastle on a matchday, replete with billboard, Bible and hectoring warnings about perdition. Look! Here come the gendarmes to direct our man to the warmth of the nearest library and the fellowship of other apocalyptics.

Instead, Romanov is free to express his meandering visions whenever the fancy takes him. Hence the extempore recitation of his own poetry at press conferences, mingled with pronouncements that Hearts will win the Champions League in three years.

A Tynecastle supporter has e-mailed me a link to a Hearts fan website, Jambos Kickback, which has lately carried profiles of Romanov, purportedly compiled by psychologists. They contain enough psychobabble to make the claim plausible - and to cause this correspondent to doze off - but they have animated about 12,000 site users to view them and 400 to post replies.

For my money, Romanov is a man with a shrewd eye for self-image. On buying into the club he understood the need to provide what film makers call the back story and he did so with simple images including his father, marching as a lieutenant in the vanguard of the Red Army on Berlin in 1945.

Mother Romanov endured the Siege of Leningrad with stoic Soviet fortitude before escaping on the legendary ice bridge.

As for Vladimir's own military service, cue Red October -the nuclear submarine prowling British waters, warheads locked on to Edinburgh Castle and Trafalgar Square.

Not that Vlad was a Cold Warrior. In fact, he was more a Battleship Potemkin sort of matelot, he wryly confessed, missing promotion because of his endearing refusal to kowtow to authority.

His introduction to capitalism? As a black market vendor of decadent Western music such as Elvis and The Beatles sold to grateful youths under the very noses of the sinister KGB.

And now we have Vladimir as the redeemer of football, sweeping scribes and usurers from the holy temple of the game, although the image is a little inexact, given that the original role-model was not a multi-millionaire given to serially sacking his disciples.

Still, if Hearts beat Celtic at Tynecastle on Sunday, Vlad will be the nearest thing Edinburgh has had to walking on water since Sir Henry Raeburn painted the Reverend Robert Walker skating across Duddingston Loch.

Taken from telegraph.co.uk