Romanovs struggle for credibility at Hearts

Roddy Forsyth

Speaking - if one may - as what Vladimir Romanov would classify as a product of Satan's spawn, this correspondent will take a particular interest in Hearts' annual general meeting next week. It is not that I expect Vlad to turn up - nobody, perhaps not even Vlad himself on past form - knows whether he will attend, far less render himself accountable to his fellow stock holders.

Nor can one envision a healthy chat amongst interested media types, because of their demonisation by Mr Romanov since he acquired his foothold in the world of Scottish football and its useful by-product, the Edinburgh property market. A great pity, this, because I do retain fond memories of Vlad's first contact with the Scottish sporting press, which took place in a Glasgow hotel suite.

He proffered small but evocative black and white photos of his parents and told their tales - Dad, a hero of the Red Army's wartime march on Berlin, Mum the stoical survivor of the Siege of Leningrad. And there were snaps of Vlad himself as a Red Navy submariner, a lovably insubordinate matelot who, in civvy street, got up the noses of the furious but plodding KGB by selling forbidden Beatles and Stones LPs from under his coat.

I thought at the time - and still do - that while this may be true in every detail, it might also be a perfect example of what Hollywood calls the back-story, the ration of personal history divulged to make a movie character credible. After all, who can verify Vlad's version?

What we did grasp, though, was that this man was making vast and implausible claims for Hearts' future under his regime. The Scottish championship, the Champions League crown and a home stadium of 50,000 - no, let's make that 60,000 - seats, filled by an army of euphoric season ticket holders.

Back on Planet Erath, meanwhile, Hearts have dropped out of the upper half-dozen clubs since the SPL introduced a split into top and bottom sixes. In the most recent set of accounts, wages at Tynecastle exceeded turnover by £12.49 million to £10.32 million. The most valuable players have been sold and yet the debt is estimated by some to be £36-38 million - and that is before the proposed reconstruction of Tynecastle and adjacent land.

What is entirely clear is that the graph of Hearts' fortunes has declined almost in exactly inverse proportion to the boasts Vlad made when he launched his takeover bid in October 2005.

Now it is also true that the recent accounts do not include the sales of Craig Gordon and Andrius Velicka, worth £11 million, so it may be that the basic debt is more like £25-30 million. To put this in perspective, at the last count, the combined debt of Celtic and Rangers was £23.31 million, against a combined turnover of £117 million.

Celtic's debt is about 8 per cent of their last recorded turnover, Rangers equals 40 per cent and Hearts is more like 300 per cent. Vlad's solution is to increase the capacity of Tynecastle via the construction of an adjacent hotel and flats, but also to lower costs - particularly salaries.

He suggests, therefore, that he can attract more fans by finding players who will work for less than he pays now - and the current crop have taken Hearts steadily down the league. Of course, Vlad himself contributed to the decline by sacking a manager who had taken the side to the top of the league, appointing malleable but mediocre successors and all the while meddling with team selection.

That, too, is supposedly soon to give way to a 'British-style' manager who can pick his own eleven. But will the new man get to buy them? And if so, does he have to sell some of the existing duds, or are they simply cleared out while the next gaffer is allowed to shop in the transfer market - and run up further debt?

There are several circles here which this correspondent simply cannot square, admittedly with rough and ready calculations. In Hearts' most recent accounts, an improvement in viability is to be financed partly through 'increased participation in European competition', as though this were a given and not a competitive variable.

But then, as Vlad retorted when I asked him, back in that Glasgow hotel, how he could overtake the Old Firm from a much smaller fan base and greatly inferior turnover, he replied: "That would be telling, wouldn't it?"

Taken from telegraph.co.uk