£10M

VLADIMIR ROMANOV has revealed he is willing to spend up to £10million on a single player for Hearts.

But he is refusing to be drawn on reports he wants Alexei Mikhailichenko to lead his team in the new season.

Former Rangers star Mikhailichenko insists he is in the dark about alleged approaches from the Tynecastle club.

Sources close to Romanov claim the Hearts owner is keen to appoint a director of football to work above Valdas Ivanauskas.

Significantly, they suggest he is likely to be unknown in Scottish football circles which would appear to rule out Mikhailichenko, who spent five years at Ibrox in the 90s and is keen to continue in coaching.

Although Romanov was coy on the Ukraine Under-21 boss he has opened up to the extent of his ambitions for the Jambos in a revealing documentary to be screened tonight.

In Romanov: King of Hearts, to be shown on BBC 2 Scotland at 9pm, the Lithuanian tycoon is shown giving short shrift to an agent trying to sell him a players from Brazil for a fee in excess of £2m.

It was not the money he baulked at but the quality of the Mr Fixit's DVDs and sales pitch which angered him.

At one point, Romanov is seen walking out of a meeting in his Lithuanian HQ to play with the child of a friend as the agent tries to interest him in a string of stars.

The cameras are also given access to part of Romanov's vast library of data on players from around the world, all of whom are ranked on a scale of one to three by the banker.

He has folders with information on over 5000 players from Brazil alone and admits he will not hesitate to spend some of the biggest fees the Scottish game has ever seen to improve his side.

Romanov said: "At Hearts we need to get two or three good, strong players because we have no substitutes for several of the positions in the team.

"If I find a good, worthy player it doesn't matter how much I have to pay for him - £7m or £10m. I'll pay it. I'll pay the money."

But he admits he has little time for agents and added: "I've run into such cynicism it goes beyond any extremes.

"The licences of such agents need to be annulled. It needs to be done immediately. We need to fight against such agents.

"The role of agents in football clubs has become tragic. First of all, they don't want to know there's a club with its own interests and ambitions and that a player needs to be nurtured.

"A player fulfils his duty when he puts the interest of his club first, then his own, then those of the agent. However, agents switch all that around."

The cameras also track Romanov's early days growing up in Kaunas and has revealing footage of him at home in the modest one-bedroom apartment he shares in the city with his wife Svetlana.

He is seen riding a taxi around town and recalls the struggle to build a secret business empire under the radar of the KGB in the former Soviet Union.

The documentary makers have given him an estimated business worth of almost £1billion and have revealing, behind-the-scenes footage of his relationship with Graham Rix and players such as Steven Pressley.

Romanov also underlines the scale of his ambitions off the park, with plans to build a new stadium that will give the club an attendance of at least 25,000.

He said: "There is just one plan which would allow us between 25-28,000 fans.

"I'm also planning a hotel and the area between the stadium and hotel will be covered with a glass dome and a conference hall will be planned for there, that sort of thing.

"It will be a sports culture centre, rather than a stadium because the fans here are not like anywhere else.

"They're special, more intelligent, football connoisseurs. I see families coming here with children and I need to build it for them to suit their needs.

"I promise to build here a stadium and it will be a stadium with the best atmosphere in the world."

Despite Mikhailichenko's denials over landing a job at Tynecastle, other sources claim talks between representatives of both parties have already taken place.

They say Romanov held off from confirming Ivanauskas as head coach last week because Mikailichenko was mulling over a move back to Scotland.

He has just led his country to the finals of the European Under-21 Championship in Portugal, where they lost 3-0 to Holland on Sunday night, and is out of contract in September.

Romanov has consistently refused to be drawn on speculation linking him with players and coaches and it was no different over Mikhailichenko.

Although the man himself was more forthcoming he denied to be in the running for a role as coach or director of football.

Mikhailichenko said: "I don't know what you are talking about. I have just returned from the Under-21s finals.

"No one has approached me about Hearts. I have heard about Romanov but I have never met or talked to him."

Taken from the Daily Record