THE SFA last night moved to rein in Vladimir Romanov by changing their rules to make him accountable for any rantings that might upset the governing body.

Hearts owner Romanov has consistently upset Hampden chiefs this season with a series of outbursts - most recently two weeks ago when he denounced as "parasites" a wide range of people associated with the game.

Back in January after Hearts lost to Celtic in controversial circumstances, Romanov declared a refereeing conspiracy against his club and insisted the only way the Parkhead outfit would win the league in his native Lithuania was if they took their own whistlers with them.

Those comments enraged SFA powerbrokers but Romanov could not be brought to book because he is not officially a director of Hearts, despite owning a controlling stake in the club and publicly hiring and firing George Burley, Graham Rix, Jim Duffy and Phil Anderton over the course of the season.

But yesterday at an extraordinary general meeting of the SFA, held just before the organisation's agm, they moved to close the loophole that allowed club owners who were not directors to escape their disciplinary system.

Publicly, the SFA refused to name any individuals the move has targeted but there is no question Romanov is the man in their sights.

SFA chief executive David Taylor said: "It's a concept of company law that you cannot sit behind the scenes and manage a company without formally taking the role of a director.

"The relevance of this in football terms is now that in order for the Football Association to exercise jurisdiction over individuals, in terms of the constitution of the SFA, then these individuals have to be directors of the company and have to be notified to us.

"Basically, from now, if you do exercise control of a football club, you will not escape our jurisdiction.

"Where there is an obvious weakness in our rules - if there are issues about the comments in the press or whatever -and people are able to evade the rules and regulations of the association while others are caught by them, we have to look at the justice of that.

"It is to put everybody on the same footing. There is a loophole to be closed and we believe we've done that."

The SFA announced a profit of £1.8million for 2005 but immediately pumped £1.4m back into its Scottish Football Partnership, which invests heavily in youth and juvenile football.

And while the association is delighted with its business results - turnover was £22m - Taylor insisted a priority was for the football side to become equally successful.

The SFA announced a five-year Strategic Plan covering 2006-2010 with the intended target of the national team qualifying for at least one of the major championships played within that timescale.

Having been drawn against Italy, France and Ukraine in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, Taylor believes the 2010 World Cup qualify campaign should be looked at with more confidence.

He said: "2008 is a tall order but 2010 is a realistic target and it is reasonable to plan for qualification. Even if we don't qualify for 2008, although we have not ruled that out, it is important we pick up as many points as possible. It is points you win in competitive matches and not FIFA rankings that dictate what pot you go into for the qualifying draws."

Taylor insisted Scotland should not bin the idea of competing for the right to host a major championship and he remains frustrated at the way in which we were denied the 2008 European Championship finals.

He said: "The fact UEFA changed the voting system after that debacle tells you something. Obviously, if we were to do it again, it would have to be for the 2016 European Championship at the earliest."

Taylor confirmed the SFA is committed to working with the Scottish Executive in a bid to stamp out sectarianism. And he insisted that while the SFA supports the concept of a pyramid system of entry to the Scottish Football League it will wait for that organisation to finalise its proposals before coming to any conclusions.

Expanding the Scottish Cup to allow junior sides entry remains a possibility.

Taken from the Daily Record