Nobody safe from ruthless Romanov

The revolving door at the entrance to the club’s Riccarton training base at Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of Edinburgh is likely to be whirring for a while yet, given the owner’s whimsical style. This, after all, is the man who is now on his fourth manager in a year and who signed an entire team of players two months ago but has already decided to chuck most of those new toys out of his big, maroon pram. If you want to work for him, ask for an advance on your compensation.

Scottish football was already a capricious business without a one-man hurricane tearing across its terrain. Rix is merely the latest figure to be sucked into it then spat back out, and deserves less sympathy than its earlier victims John Robertson and George Burley, who didn’t take the job due to desperation and had less warning of the impossible working conditions that awaited. Rix knew the maelstrom he was stepping into and probably wouldn’t have had he not been attempting to rescue a reputation tainted by a conviction for unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Rix’s departure last week was almost incidental to that of Burley on October 23. That was the season’s defining moment. We will never know if Burley could have maintained the form of eight wins and two draws, which was of title-winning standard, but it is certain that without the loss of momentum engendered by his needless removal, Celtic would have faced a far stiffer challenge and malfunctioning Rangers would have been left far behind. It is not mischief that some of us still consider Burley a candidate for manager of the year.

Before Burley’s exit, it was already clear the normal lines of demarcation around a football club had been blurred and that Romanov was indeed a ‘meddle-omaniac’. Burley was constantly asked for explanations of his decision to play Julien Brellier. The Frenchman has proved a key figure in Hearts’ success with commanding performances as a holding midfielder, the latest in last week’s 1-1 draw with Rangers, and the protection he has offered his back four and goalkeeper helps explain why Hearts have the best defensive record in the Premierleague. Yet Brellier is not showy enough for Romanov in style and Rix’s persistence with him is said to have hastened his exit.

Romanov seems to want a team of tricky wingers that is simultaneously capable of a title challenge. That is now Valdas Ivanauskas’s concern and the “interim head coach” looked like a man with the weight of the universe upon him on Friday. He won a double for FBK Kaunas, Romanov’s Lithuanian club, but was still removed from office. Now he is expected to hold off Rangers for the Champions League place and win the Scottish Cup or things will go Vladly for him again.

“He wants a good result and he wants supporters to see the beautiful game as well,” said Ivanauskas of his demanding boss, “but this season teams are playing doubly hard against Hearts, showing us the same respect they give Celtic and Rangers. We will try to play the beautiful game but we need good results too.”

Yet it was typical of the confusion around Hearts that David Southern, who handles the club’s public relations, should have phoned Sunday newspapers to tell them that they could speak to Ivanauskas on Friday through an interpreter, only for the fussing Charlie Mann, Romanov’s spin doctor, to inform journalists that there wouldn’t be an audience. The same Mann, of course, who steered various newspapers and broadcasters away from Rix’s appointment on the night the story broke. Fast forward to last Sunday and Mann was happy to be quoted on his latest view of Rix: “As soon as I met him, I could see in his eyes that he’s the real deal”.

Other roles at the club, meanwhile, expand to fill the void that should be occupied by a strong manager. Steven Pressley, the captain, has provided admirably stoic leadership through the changes and it was he who decided which players should face the press on Friday. Takis Fyssas, the Greek left-back, was one deemed senior enough. “We’ve known Valdas from the start of the season,” said the 32-year-old. “He’s a positive person. He wants hard work all the time. We are going to help him and he’s going to help the team to our target for this year which is second position and the Scottish Cup. We have a difficult six weeks now to make our dream a reality.”

Ivanauskas is no Sir Bobby Robson, Claudio Ranieri or Ottmar Hitzfeld, the sort of names that Romanov dangled in front of supporters after Burley left, before pipping Crawley Town to Rix. Yet it may be to the 39-year-old’s advantage that he has previous experience of working under Tynecastle’s tyrant and has been at Hearts since the start of this season as a coach. If there is method to the seeming madness, it could lie in Ivanauskas deliberately being given time to get up to speed on the British game by observing Burley and Rix before stepping into a managerial seat that is not so much hot as scalding.

Ivanauskas’s Vetra Vilnius side knocked Tony Mowbray’s Hibs out of the Intertoto Cup in 2004, but that was before the Englishman’s methods had taken hold at Easter Road. In his playing days, Ivanauskas was a 6ft 2in target man, a prototype of Edgaras Jankauskas for the Lithuanian national team, after initially representing the USSR. He also had spells with Austria Vienna and Hamburg SV and secured his Uefa Pro Licence through Germany’s coaching system, completing his placement with Lokomotiv Moscow. “Every manager has his own ideas and I try to implement them with my coaching,” he said. “I think for myself on how the players train. I listen to Mr Romanov but I have the last word. It was the same for Graham, he gathered information from all the coaches and we all discussed things but the last word was his.”

Ivanauskas has said there will not be major changes, but small ones such as the dropping of Brellier would be hugely significant in indicating his level of autonomy. “I cannot say what the plans of the new manager will be,” said Fyssas, “but everybody can see we have the best defence in the league, we have a good keeper in Craig Gordon and good offensive players like Paul Hartley and Rudi Skacel, so why would he want to change something? But as professionals we are ready for anything.”

Fyssas says that for all the fuss over Romanov’s ruthless chopping of coaches, Scottish football is still far more serene than the game in Greece. He also had three managers in one season at Panionios, his first club, and at Panathinaikos, where fans stormed the training ground to trash the players’ cars after they conceded the title to Olympiakos on the final day of the 2002-2003 season. “That was the worst thing I’ve experienced in football, but it was not only at Panathinaikos. Olympiakos won seven consecutive titles but every time they lost a game there was trouble. So, for me, this is a normal day. In Greece we have 12 or 13 sports papers and the journalists try to sack the coach.”

Some Hearts supporters, with justification, will point out that the club was drifting toward the rocks until Romanov arrived at the helm. His advocates say that houses would now be under construction on the site of Tynecastle, Andy Webster, Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon would be at the Old Firm and there would be no prospect of a Scottish Cup final or a Champions League place without him. This time last year, Hearts were 30 points behind Rangers rather than ahead of them.

The insistent ambition of their owner to overcome the Old Firm is enticing to such followers. Yet the suspicion lingers that Hearts could prosper faster with a hands-off benefactor. Romanov’s interventions have damaged morale and momentum at key stages. Sunday’s Cup semi-final with Hibs could prove a pivotal fixture and other fans will remember that their unbeaten start to the league season ended a week after Burley’s departure in a 2-0 defeat at Easter Road. “Some people will be happy about this,” said Fyssas. “They will say, ‘They are going to lose sight of their targets now that one more coach goes out’, but I think it will make us stronger. We must stay focused. We understand the president (Romanov) loves this team, I think even his managers would admit that.”

Romanov’s love can be tough, though. The memory lingers of Roman, his son, walking into Tynecastle while a supporter unleashed a stream of invective at him in the aftermath of Burley leaving. His father threw Roman into the management of an aluminium plant “like you throw a puppy into water to see if it sinks or swims” and took away his passport after sending him to gain a degree in the United States so that he could not submit to homesickness. The latter shows an element of the control freak so it should not surprise us that Romanov refuses to delegate team selections to his managers. It was revealed that he, rather than Rix, picked the team for the 1-1 draw at Dundee United in February and the ensuing furore was followed by a damaging 2-1 home defeat by Aberdeen where further ground was lost to Celtic, who had already come back from 2-0 down to win at Tynecastle on New Year’s Day.

According to Fyssas there was no instruction to the players from the Romanovs or Rix, that the head coach would be sacked if the side failed to beat Rangers last Sunday. Yet it has now emerged that it was the last straw for Romanov, who had his finger poised above the firing button after being irked by Rix’s whine, following a recent 0-0 draw at Inverness, that it was too windy at the Caledonian stadium for his side to play properly. That gale was a gentle breeze compared to the hurricane Vlad that was about to hit.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk