Open Hearts Surgery

Vladimir Romanov has shown a willingness to operate quickly and in sacking Graham Rix he may have got it spot on. Michael Grant reports

VLADIMIR Romanov’s unconventional approach to running Hearts generates such heat and light that the cold pragmatism and sense of his decision to sack Graham Rix has been largely obscured.

For those who are capable of viewing this latest twist in isolation, and resisting the temptation to see it in the seemingly chaotic context of the earlier departures of George Burley, Phil Anderton and George Foulkes, the removal of Rix, and even its timing, are easy to justify.

Romanov came to the conclusion that Hearts had a better chance of winning the Tennent’s Scottish Cup, and especially qualifying for the Champions League, without Rix than with him.

As for all those “Mad Vlad” headlines, surely it would have been even more eccentric to limp into the climax of a pivotal season with a head coach he no longer trusted?

What still have the look of Romanov’s three most obvious mistakes were the removal of Burley and Anderton and the appointment of Rix in the first place.

The beleaguered coach always had the demeanour of a man weighed down by baggage and these days Hearts are attracting too much media scrutiny, for Tynecastle to be an appropriate place for his rehabilitation.

His teams began to play with the guarded caution which shaped Rix’s public image and it showed in their results.

On the basis of league form over his period in charge Hearts would be down in fourth place in the SPL having taken only half of the 48 points available to them. A five-point advantage over Celtic turned into a 14-point deficit and Hearts’ lead over Rangers, which stood at 12 points when he arrived, had been halved by the time he left.

The overall picture was of Hearts being pulled back into the pack. The fact new director of football Jim Duffy had such a large influence on first-team management meant he, too, was culpable, in Romanov’s mind, and had to go.

Romanov is hacking away at the preconceptions that mediocre form is still good enough for Hearts. The temptation is to look at a season in which the team could win the cup and reach the Champions League and be baffled by how much more the Lithuanian owner expects from his manager.

But that is to judge the club by traditional criteria which views them as essentially leading also-rans who should be content to finish the best of the rest behind the Old Firm.

In providing Burley and then Rix with unprecedented resources in terms of transfer fees and salaries – they massively outspent Rangers in the January transfer window, for example – Romanov has completely redrawn the parameters of what is expected at Tynecastle.

One domestic cup and a distant second or, unforgivably, third in the championship does not strike him as much to shout about after amassing a stable of players who cost up to £850,000 or earn £10,000-a-week.

Even supporters with their reservations about Romanov are thrilled by this brashness. It feels like an overdue and refreshing contrast to what has seemed like Scotland’s traditional acceptance of Old Firm superiority.

If it is possible to applaud Romanov’s exacting standards and his decisiveness, though, the same cannot be said for the flawed judgments which have created the sense of turmoil and circus at Hearts this season.

He is their great benefactor, but Romanov himself may be one of the impediments to Hearts realising his primary ambition for the club, namely growing them as a brand by qualifying for the Champions League on an annual basis.

Given that Hearts will always be locked in at least a three-way race for two qualifying places, Romanov’s impetuous and meddling way of operating is liable to periodically destabilise Tynecastle and hand the initiative to the perennial challengers from Glasgow in any given campaign.

The owner’s inability to prevent himself from influencing those issues which managers regard as sacrosanct – player recruitment and team selection – is the single most unsettling aspect of how he runs Hearts.

Either he has an egotistical urge for greater personal involvement in these matters or at the very least he considers himself more of an expert than Burley and Rix in certain respects.

Allowing him to indulge himself in this belief would be a highly unorthodox but intriguing exercise were it not for the fact Romanov’s view of what amounts to a good footballer seems wildly ill-judged.

There is the suspicion he would rather sprinkle the team with Lithuanian wingers than find room for a solid defensive midfielder such as Julien Brellier.

Rix’s decision to go against Romanov’s orders and return Brellier to the team last weekend against Rangers, after he had been missing because of suspension, is believed to have been a contributory factor in the owner’s patience finally snapping.

Never mind that Brellier fills a crucial role as the team’s anchor and is arguably the best protective defensive midfielder in the SPL, he is not one of Romanov’s favoured sons having been signed by Burley but subsequently damned as not sufficiently “entertaining”.

Brellier is one of several players whose long-term future at Hearts is now open to question. Rudi Skacel’s contract runs only until the summer, Andy Webster has suspended talks on a new deal and does not seem willing to stay and Craig Gordon may suspect his career would be better served by seeking a move this summer.

What is any player supposed to think when the club chairman publicly writes off January 11 signings as inferior? “All the players who came here in January need time to adapt to Scottish football,” said interim coach Valdas Ivanauskas. “All these players have a chance. They need to show they are ready to take their chance every day in training.”

Ivanauskas is well liked around the club but given how impressively managers such as Gordon Strachan and Tony Mowbray communicate with their players and the media it was impossible not to note down his spartan comments, painstakingly relayed to Sunday newspaper journalists via a translator, and conclude that here was another disadvantage Hearts had brought upon themselves.

All the more wearying when Ivanauskas somehow found himself able to conduct another media interview on his own a few moments later, in English.

After finding that he could not build a lasting working relationship with three British managers so far, John Robertson, Burley and Rix, it would barely even register on the Richter scale of Tynecastle shocks if Romanov concluded that his trust in Ivanauskas and the 39-year-old’s apparent acceptance of his interventionist style of ownership amounted to persuasive reasons to give him the job permanently.

That the familiar flotsam and jetsam of the managerial circuit was immediately linked to the job last week – the likes of Nevio Scala and Lothar Matthaus – was predictable.

Graeme Souness distanced himself from Tynecastle although big names will take on the challenge of working for Romanov so long as the money is right.

Former Lithuanian national coach Benjaminas Zelkevicius would appear to have the necessary credentials apart from the correct date of birth.

Although Romanov contemplated a role for Sir Bobby Robson earlier in the season he generally prefers his management staff to be younger, and Zelkevicius is 62. So the pack of cards has been handed to Ivanauskas in Romanov’s latest gamble.

Some Hearts fans have taken to referring to next Sunday’s Tennent’s Scottish Cup encounter with Hibs as “the final”. They presume that whoever wins what is actually the semi-final will enjoy the formality of being presented with the cup after brushing aside Dundee or Gretna on May 13.

That is what makes the timing of Romanov’s decision last week so spectacularly bold. The most established and joyous source of bragging rights for Hearts supporters is the fact that Hibs have not won the cup for 104 years.

If Hearts lose Sunday’s semi-final those fans will surrender what had seemed like a birthright. And that will be enough to make a few of them mad with Vlad.

Taken from the Sunday Herald