Vladimir's grim fairytales

WHEN times were hard in London in the 1980s, a mate of mine used to raise money for drink by writing letters to the Sunday Sport, preposterous missives that made him a fiver every time one of them was published, which was often. This, remember, was the newspaper that first splashed the news that "Elvis is alive on the moon with Adolf Hitler on a number 94 bus" and also revealed the heart-rending story: "Five-headed love child eats Hershey bars in Taiwanese brothel." When my buddy wrote to say that he'd just spotted the Man from Atlantis down our local pub, eating prawn cocktail flavoured crisps and always hanging round at the pool table, well, the Sport boys couldn't get enough of it.

I trace my love of conspiracy theories back to those heady days. I've heard them all at this stage. Read books on some of them, seen documentaries on others. For example, having studied all the evidence, I discount the view held by some that the Titanic was not sunk but actually captured by Albanian pirates. However, I give serious credence to the 1969 landing on the moon being a hoax put together in a television studio in the Arizona desert. What? You think Richard Nixon wouldn't have done it to boost his flagging popularity?

What I'm saying here is that I have an open mind on a lot of this stuff - JFK, Marilyn, Diana, UFOs - but there is one thing that I refuse to accept. There's one thing that's just so far out there that it's threatening to climb on board the number 94. There isn't a person alive that's going to convince me that Graham Rix signed all those players in the January transfer window as was alleged last week.

Roman Romanov cited poor judgment in the transfer market as part of the reason for Rix's dismissal but he'd have more chance of convincing us that the moon is made of cheese. There's only one man responsible for the January invasion and that is Romanov Snr.

There are exceptions. Lee Johnson, Chris Hackett and Neil McCann? Rix men, the three of them. Mirsad Beslija? Signed by Rix. I know this because I happened to be at the Hearts training centre at Riccarton when the manager was discussing Beslija with Roman Romanov. Long glass pressed against thin wall, I heard how keen Rix was on the Bosnian who's hardly been mapped since his arrival. But all the others? Straceny and Barasa and Mikela, M'Bolhi, Petras and Goncalves and Aguiar - sourced by Vladimir Romanov and dropped into Rix's lap. Here's seven players, Graham. We think they're useful but they're probably unfit. Now go and win the championship. Or else.

Vladimir Romanov is a great man for dishing out the blame but he was guilty of negligence during the week. What other way can we describe his lack of a Plan B when getting rid of his manager?

This is a critical time of the season for Hearts in both league and cup. A lot of glory and a lot of money is on the line in the coming weeks and months. Before sacking Rix, shouldn't Romanov have had a new regime lined up to guide them through their most important set of games since God knows when? Instead of ensuring a smooth transition in deeply sensitive times, he has traumatised the squad once more and has pitched in his lackey, Valdas Ivanauskas. It was an exercise in madness.

Rix has had worse days than last Wednesday, 184 of them spent banged up inside the walls of Wandsworth prison. He had plenty more bad ones upon his release, days looking out the window of his home in Southampton and wondering when the photographers were going to leave, days when the phone rang to tell him he'd been turned down for another job, days when the phone didn't ring at all. Life is cruel. Football mirrors life. It's a nasty old business.

He said he didn't see the sack coming, but I don't believe that. I don't think he's lying, I just think he's in denial. Rix knew he was on borrowed time from the moment he walked in the door at Tynecastle. He's no fantasist. As far as I'm aware he doesn't believe in Santa Claus and you have to imagine his faith in fairytales would have taken one hell of a beating when tucked up inside. On the verge of signing for Crawley Town, he suddenly gets a call from Vladimir Romanov asking for a meet in London, pronto. He drives from Southampton to Doncaster, gets the train from Doncaster to London and a taxi to Romanov's hotel and two minutes later he's the Hearts manager. Two minutes. That's all it took. Too good to be true, no?

He knew what he was getting himself into. He said he wanted to believe the Romanovs were telling the truth when they said he got the job because of his passion, his knowledge and his honesty but he must have had his doubts. I don't believe Rix ever felt that he was going to be the one who finally tamed Romanov's mad excesses. He tried, though. He won over the players with his work ethic and he was loyal to his boss. In a cruel parting statement, Roman Romanov, the Mini Me of the family, accused Rix of some kind of betrayal last week, a grossly unfair comment.

I spent three hours in Rix's company at the beginning of January and, after much cajoling, his criticisms of Romanov were virtually non-existent. Even off the record he was unprepared to shop a man who, we both knew, was making his life very difficult at that time. All he would say was that Romanov had held him responsible for losing to Celtic the week before. Hearts were 2-0 ahead and ended up being beaten 3-2. The Lithuanian felt Rix had blundered by taking off Deividas Cesnauskis in the 77th minute and let him know in no uncertain terms. The manager fought his corner and it ended amicably. We weren't exactly holding the front page with that revelation.

Rix had good reason to bite his tongue, of course. Romanov gave him a way back into football's mainstream and, despite all the difficulties in the relationship, it was something he never forgot in his brief time at the club.

He hoped, but never banked on, being at Tynecastle next season, saying only that "when the time comes to leave I want to go with dignity and having felt that I couldn't have done any more". He managed that much. When he left there was a lot of sympathy for him from the supporters. There wasn't a riot of protest but he'd won the respect of the fans at least.

They could see how much he put into the job, a job he did pretty well in circumstances more difficult than we'll probably ever know.

The atmosphere among the supporters on his exit was in stark contrast to what they got up to on the day of his arrival. A section of them abused him on his first day at Tynecastle. A hanging mob gathered outside the ground and disgraced themselves with shouts of "Monster" and, bizarrely, "Michael Jackson". Some idiot in a Jag blared the song Young At Heart from his car stereo, a reference to Rix's criminal conviction for unlawful sex with a 15-year-old. It was incredibly nasty but they got over it. Second in the SPL and with a Cup semi-final to come, Rix had earned the right to finish the work started by George Burley, another victim of a trigger-happy owner.

It is believed that Romanov enjoys his music. It emerged during the week that a rendition of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire inspired the England cricket team to victory in the second Test in Mumbai on Wednesday but we can think of another tune by the Man In Black that is more appropriate to the Hearts owner. It's a ballad called Hurt.

What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

They're already lining up to be a part of Romanov's empire. But we all know how it's going to end, don't we?

Taken from the Scotsman