Silent Rix attacked by the Romanovs

Graham Rix was unavailable for comment yesterday following his precipitate sacking as Hearts first-team coach - it is understood that he was at his mother's home in Yorkshire en route to joining his family in the south of England - but friends reported that the former Portsmouth and Oxford United manager was "shocked but cheerful".

Rix's priority is to get back into coaching following a brief but stormy tenure at Tynecastle - he was in charge for 19 games after being appointed as the unforeseen successor to the similarly discharged George Burley in November - and secure the balance of the wages due to him from the short-term contract that was due to have expired in June.

He may be well advised not to hold his breath waiting for that to happen, given that neither Burley nor Phil Anderton, who was sacked as chief executive in October, has received a penny from club owner Vladimir Romanov since their exits. Like Rix, Burley and Anderton held their tongues in the aftermath of their ejections, because both were understandably concerned that if they went public with their disclosures about life under the Romanov regime they would damage their chances of compensation.

One less savoury feature of the summary eviction of Rix and Jim Duffy, the director of football, has been the haste with which the Romanovs delivered their denunciations. Vladimir's first shot was to say that he wished he had got rid of Rix sooner.

His son, Roman, the club's chairman, said yesterday: "We didn't have anybody available and Graham came in." However, in November, he had said: "He wasn't our first choice but after long considerations, we made our decision."

Although Roman last week stated that neither he nor his father could pick the team because "that is the job of the professionals" there are no serious denials at Tynecastle that such interference happened during Rix's tenure. Direct interventions by Vladimir stopped after Rix revealed to his players in February that he was "not in charge of team selection", but the club owner never desisted from his habit of telling the coaching staff how he would have won games.

It is understood that Duffy more than once suggested that Vladimir put his theories up for scrutiny before games. There are those within Tynecastle who believe that the Romanovs got some of their input from Valdas Ivanauskas, who was fired by Vladimir as coach of the Lithuanian club, Kaunas, last summer but taken on to the Tynecastle staff this season and who is now in charge of the senior squad. As for the 11 signings made in January cited by the Romanovs as another reason for dismissing Rix and Duffy, at least eight were nominated and secured by Vladimir himself.

While it is true that some Hearts fans have not been satisfied with the standard of football played under Rix, it is instructive to compare the team who drew 1-1 with Rangers last Sunday with the side who won 1-0 against the Ibrox side under George Burley in September. Sunday's team contained 10 players who were in the September line-up. It will be intriguing to see how Ivanauskas accommodates Romanov's views on how football should be played.

Taken from telegraph.co.uk