Could we as Hearts fans have done more?

Quite simply Hearts have been run into the ground by the current board to the extent that there is literally no cash in the Tynecastle bank accounts. Ultimately, it has been the summer months and the lack of immediate income that has brought this eventuality.

Certainly it is my opinion as a long-life Hearts supporter – although no finance expert – that the directors should have called 'time' at least a year ago when HMRC first threatened to wind the club up. Instead they have battled away and used up every revenue stream in an attempt to keep the wolf from the door to the extent there is for example, no 2013-14 season-ticket money to work with even as early as June.

However the overriding conclusion for me is that the directors were always reluctant to renege on the debt to UBIG who were effectively the paymasters of the club. Had it been a British bank Hearts would have been in administration in 2004 when the club was being forced to sell off Tynecastle to repay Bank of Scotland.

The irony is that owing huge sums of money to UBIG/UKIO has not only kept the club alive but also nearly killed it.

Are Hearts fans culpable for the mess Romanov has left?

Instead we now have a club that is bereft of cash, left with a squad that is low on both quantity and quality, and in short a business that is considerably harder work for the administrator than may have been the case. The hope now is that the Jambos can survive the summer and start taking in money from the new season. It strikes me that the hardest part of the administrator's job is to get the business into a trading one given that many cuts have already taken place, perhaps there is even worse news to be revealed when they get into the detail at Tynecastle?

The question is now - was it worth it?

In truth I had no chance to 'believe' in Romanov because he sacked John Robertson within months of arriving and the chaos reigned from there. We had success with two Scottish Cups and a second-place finish which briefly brought Champions League football to Edinburgh – ironically against AEK Athens who are now also in major financial trouble. However, the two Cup wins were in spite of Romanov - particularly last year - and for every pound he spent he effectively cost us more with his maddening (and often just mad) interference.

Would I have swapped '5-1' for 'profit'? We'd all want both but the sad truth of the Romanov reign is that with the money invested we could have had so much more not one or other.

Could we as supporters have done more? I'm told we could have by a number of outsiders but I am not so sure. I am a shareholder but one of just 8-9% who are not 'Romanov' and there was always the feeling that a boycott of any form would simply see him walk away and leave the club riddled with debt (a debt which was never reduced from the peak of the Robinson era before him) which is of course what has happened now.

Romanov was always a roller-coaster which would come to a bumping end. We are there now but equally it could be the beginning. If the administrator can revive Hearts then there are seemingly a number of buyers looking to purchase the club. Moving into Administration has made the Club both cheaper and easier to buy.

As a result I am optimistic 'off the park'. On it, however, a -15 points start next season is going to difficult to overcome.

We have to hope that we can somehow strengthen the squad at some point this season – Hearts are currently under a signing embargo of course - and that at least Partick Thistle don' get off to a flying start. Otherwise a relegation could be both disastrous and something we truly cannot recover from.

Is this the start or the end? No can foresee that but it is a relief in a way. The agony of the unknown is over and we can now just hope that Hearts can flourish once more and return some dignity to the famous maroon shirt.

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