Lifetime of drama in one Jambo year
PAUL KIDDIE

HAD events at Tynecastle this year been offered as a manuscript for a book, it would surely have been rejected on the basis of being too ridiculous to be believed.

Top of the league and unbeaten after their first ten games of the season - including eight straight wins - Hearts were looking like a team quite capable of bringing the league title back to Gorgie for the first time in 46 years.

Riding high on the crest of a wave under George Burley, the club was plunged into turmoil when paymaster Vladimir Romanov booted the Scot out of his job just hours before the SPL visit of Dunfermline in October.

Bewilderment doesn't even come close to describing the feelings of the fans who heard the news on their way to the game. Romanov had pulled off a major coup in landing the vastly experienced Burley in the summer so surely this was some kind of cruel hoax?

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. For reasons which have yet to be fully explained due to a confidentiality agreement signed by both parties, the Lithuanian millionaire parted company with the ex-Ipswich Town and Derby gaffer due to what were claimed to be "irreconcilable differences".

Assistant Simon Hunt and goalkeeping coach Malcolm Webster followed out the door, leaving willing workhorse John McGlynn in charge until a new replacement was found.

Despite the former youth coach somehow cajoling his shell-shocked players to successive home wins over Dunfermline and Kilmarnock, there remained the feeling that Romanov may have just single-handedly wrecked the Jambos' chances of title glory.

The sense of shock being felt around Tynecastle deepened further in the wake of Hearts' first league loss of the season, a 2-0 reverse at the hands of arch rivals Hibs at Easter Road on Saturday, October 29.

If that wasn't hard enough for the supporters to swallow, what happened 48 hours later must have left them sick to the pit of their stomachs.

The appointment of Phil Anderton as chief executive in March had been viewed as a terrific piece of business and his shrewd marketing tactics had the "sold out" signs hanging outside Tynecastle for every home game.

All was not well behind the scenes, though, and the disillusioned former SRU figurehead had intimated to Romanov that he intended to quit at the end of the season.

No sooner had the pair been overheard having a heated exchange at Easter Road than Anderton was sacked.

The Lithuanian claimed his chief executive had to go because he "didn't tick all the boxes". With Anderton went the chances of Sir Bobby Robson accepting the offer to become Director of Football and in a further crushing blow for the fans, chairman George Foulkes resigned in protest, later blasting Romanov as a "dictator" and voicing his regret at ever having helped bring the Baltic businessman to the club.

That was where the dilemma lay for the punters. They no doubt wanted to turn against the former nuclear submariner but, at the same time, they knew that, had it not been for his intervention, Tynecastle would have been reduced to rubble and the team would have been playing their football at Murrayfield.

Their mood wasn't helped by the recruitment in early November of Graham Rix as Burley's successor.

There was uproar among supporters, with the former Chelsea coach having served a jail sentence in 1999 for unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Rix had been plucked from nowhere, having just days earlier been in the frame for the Crawley Town job.

Many fans were prepared to give him time to prove himself, although their patience began to run out after just a few games, with the team suffering an alarming dip in form.

There may have been question marks over Romanov's decision to hire Rix, but his recruitment of the vastly experienced Campbell Ogilvie as general secretary and director of operations brought widespread approval, the man who had been at Rangers for 27 years taking up his post on December 5.

By this stage Romanov had bought out Leslie Deans and Robert McGrail and was well on his way to acquiring the 75 per cent of shares required to de-list the company from the London Stock Exchange, a switch which will be made this month.

With everything which happened in the latter half of the year, it is easy to forget that the first few months of 2005 were also filled with controversy.

The year had started off so well for the fans, who had been clamouring for the removal of chief executive Chris Robinson.

Romanov completed his buy-out of Robinson's entire shareholding on February 1 to take his stake in the club to 29.9 per cent.

Robinson resigned as chief executive, although remained on the board as a non-executive director. Although ecstatic at his departure from the post, fans were wary of his continued link with the club and their suspicions would later be justified with it emerging later that the "Pie Man" had been retained by Romanov as an independent advisor on stadium issues.

In moves which significantly increased the Lithuanian influence in Gorgie, Brian Duffin, a director since the club's flotation on the Stock Market in 1997, also tendered his resignation and in came Sergejus Fedotovas, Roman Romanov and Liutauras Varanavicus.

Fedotovas, an executive director of Ukio Bankas, was appointed as acting chief executive pending the recruitment of a permanent replacement for Robinson. Romanov, a member of the board of UKIO Banko Investicine Grupe and Varanavicus, the chairman of the Supervisory Committee of Ukio Bankas and the president of the Lithuanian Football Federation, were installed as non-executive directors.

Romanov's son Roman junior took over as chairman upon Foulkes' exit and also assumed the role of acting chief executive while the search for Anderton's successor continued.

On the park boss, John Robertson, right - yes, remember him - endured an agonising CIS Cup semi-final defeat from Motherwell at Easter Road, Terry Butcher's side edging a five-goal thriller to increase pressure on the strike legend.

Hearts, who had required a replay to squeeze past Partick Thistle in the third round of the Tennent's Scottish Cup in January, helped make up for their crushing against Well by getting through against Kilmarnock after a replay to set up a second semi-final showdown with Celtic.

The rematch in Ayrshire brought out the best of the Jambos, teenager Lee Wallace smashing a glorious first goal for the club and Lithuanian David Cesnauskis giving a tantalising glimpse of his talents with a glorious effort as Jim Jefferies' side were brushed aside.

One week after the shattering CIS Cup exit, it was announced to the Stock Exchange that Hearts had withdrawn from the controversial agreement to sell Tynecastle Stadium to Cala Homes.

March then arrived with what appeared to be the most shrewd of appointments by Romanov, former Scottish Rugby Union chief executive Anderton appointed to a similar role at Hearts.

His arrival was greeted by genuine enthusiasm by all connected with the club and even SPL rivals privately acknowledged the Gorgie outfit had pulled off something of a coup by persuading the marketing guru to lead the Romanov revolution.

It wouldn't be the last time "Fireworks Phil" hit the headlines in 2005.

Robertson had welcomed the appointment of Anderton, although the smooth-talking chief executive refused to guarantee Robbo's future beyond the end of the season when he consistently stressed his position would be reviewed.

The club then became embroiled in an unseemly tangle with the authorities after Saulius Mikoliunas was dismissed for barging assistant referee Andy Davis after he awarded a hotly-disputed injury time penalty to Rangers at Tynecastle.

The Lithuanian was hit by a five-match ban - which was later reduced on appeal to three - and the club demanded an official inquiry into the "integrity" of the officials' decision, a move which resulted in Hearts being fined £5000 after being found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute.

The Jambos' second tilt at reaching a cup final met with the same fate as their first, Celtic triumphing 2-1 in the Tennent's Scottish Cup semi-final showdown at Hampden Park in April. Robertson was coming under increasing pressure by this stage and the defeat from Hibs at Tynecastle on April 13 all but ended the Jambos' bid for Europe and moved Robbo ever closer to the exit door.

The inevitable parting of the ways duly arrived in May, although given Robertson's frustration at Romanov's running of Hearts it is hard to believe the split was as amicable as portrayed by both parties. But fans who had become exasperated at the length of time it was taking to unearth a new boss were suitably placated when Burley arrived on June 30.

Further boardroom changes in July saw Robinson resign from his position as a non-executive director with Romanov's niece Julia Goncaruk joining, the former chief executive severing his official ties after 11 years.

However, if the fans thought that was the start of a bright new era, they were in for a rude awakening with Burley lasting less than four months, his departure triggering a sensational chain of events never before seen in Scottish football.

Taken from the Scotsman