McKenzie: be wary of 'bully' Massone

Roddy McKenzie has told Hearts fans to pray that Angelo Massone fails with his takeover bid, insisting that the Italian is a 'million times worse' than Vladimir Romanov.

The retired goalkeeper, who spent a decade at Tynecastle before leaving in 2003, worked under Massone for a year at Livingston before the club entered administration in summer 2009. The lawyer is involved in one of the three groups to have submitted an offer for Hearts and McKenzie is dumbfounded that he might find a way back into Scottish football. "He was like a bully," he said. "If people thought Romanov was bad, then this guy is a million times worse. Any Hearts person that gets sucked in by what he says has to be very careful.

"He is a bully because I witnessed what went on. Things happened and they wanted players to sign things to say that there had not been a problem at the club. A lot of the older players didn't sign it. He wanted us to come out and say everything was all right but a lot of the older players said 'no'. I think he just thought he could do what he wanted and people would just roll over. There was a group of us, not young players, we were just standing up for our rights and wanted paid on time. We wanted information from the board but it was just like, 'no, no there is no problem, we'll pay you when we want'.

"It's not any different to what Hearts have been going through. If he is going to throw about figures of money that he's got, I would take that with a pinch of salt."

McKenzie was the squad's PFA Scotland representative at the time and recalls how the players were just hours away from taking industrial action due to the wages fiasco. "We decided we were not going to play a couple of times, then all of a sudden on Friday at 4pm the money was paid into the bank because they knew they needed the money from a home game the following day," he said.

"That was the only thing we had in our power, to say 'we're not playing'. That does not look good because you want to try and play the games and it didn't help anyone. But as players you're powerless when you have a chairman who just wants to dictate. I don't even know what he was doing there. I didn't see the big picture."

Massone's bid might be thwarted by the Scottish Football Association's 'fit and proper' person test and, even though it is up to administrators BDO to make the checks, McKenzie has called on the authorities to intervene. "You cannot have another guy like that in Scottish football," he said. "It was an absolute disgrace what he did to Livingston and people like that should not be allowed into football. They have to step up and say we want fit and proper people to run the clubs. That was only four years ago that he was involved in Scottish, he's not going to change."

Taken from the Herald