Hearts rebels gain support from all quarters after speaking out

Heart of Midlothian were plunged into a state of shock yesterday by their Moscow-born millionaire owner. To do so to a club, and their players, who have absorbed the effects of three managers being sacked in 18 months, as well as a chief executive and a chairman, and the recruitment of more than 30 new players, beggars belief.

The signs last night on the message boards of fans’ websites is that the Hearts supporters are ready to join their team if the rebel leaders, Steven Pressley, Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon, pay for going public with their dissatisfaction about the way Romanov has run the club since taking control more than a year ago.

They might have called him The King of Hearts but equally, those fans knew in their own hearts that the Mad Vlad headlines were not entirely without credence. Romanov now owns Hearts, lock stock and barrel after taking over the club’s £20 million debt in 2005 and transferring it to his own bank in Lithuania.

At the core of the dressing-room dissatisfaction is the constant change in head coach, with John Robertson, George Burley and Graham Rix all being jettisoned, while Valdas Ivanauskas — who is popular with the players — begged for two weeks’ leave of absence last Monday on health grounds and is now recovering in Lithuania from stress.

Ivanauskas has made 59 changes to his teams this season. Hearts’ bloated squad, in which many of the Romanov signings can never hope to make the first team, has troubled players and fans all season. A fortnight ago, Ivanauskas’s side contained four Lithuanians for the derby with Hibernian — a game screened live in television in Lithuania — while Robbie Neilson was relegated to the bench just days after making his debut for Scotland against Ukraine.

This is not the first time that such capricious selection has reared its head. The exclusion of Julien Brellier, the midfield player, since he refused to sign a new contract, has irked fans because of the Frenchman’s popularity. Rudi Skacel was sold to Southampton in the summer after falling out with Romanov, while Andy Webster used a Fifa loophole to engineer a move to Wigan Athletic.

It does not take a qualified psychiatrist to establish that there is a simmering undercurrent among Hearts’ core group of Scottish players. “I have total sympathy for Steven Pressley and the others,” George Foulkes, who resigned his chairmanship last season in protest at Romanov’s decision-making, said. “They have kept the club going through turbulent times, though with changes of management and inexplicable events, they must be at the end of their tether.”

To judge from The Gang of Three’s press conference, they are. Pressley revealed “significant unrest” within the dressing-room. Flanked by Craig Gordon, the goalkeeper, and Paul Hartley, the midfield player, the Scotland defender issued a terse statement outlining the deep rift between the players and the hierarchy.

Pressley insisted that the temporary departure of Ivanauskas was “incidental” to the problems behind the scenes. Eduard Malofeev will take charge of the team for the visit of Dunfermline Athletic, the same visitors a year ago after Burley’s surprise sacking when he had taken Hearts to the top of the Premierleague.

“This statement is no reflection on Eduard, who, from my initial impressions, seems a very honest and diligent man,” Pressley said. “I would like to wish Valdas a speedy recovery, but whether he returns or not is almost incidental in relation to the problems associated with this club.

“I have tried, along with the coaching staff and certain colleagues, to implement the correct values and disciplines, but it has become an impossible task. There is only so much a coaching staff, a captain and certain colleagues can do without the full backing, direction and coherence of the manager and those running the football club.

“While, publicly, I have expressed the need for unity behind the scenes, I have made my concerns abundantly clear. The last two years have been very testing for the players. Together, we have faced a number of challenges and worked hard at retaining some degree of unity. However, due to the circumstances, morale, understandably, is not good and there is significant unrest within the dressing-room.”

Romanov refused to comment at the club’s training academy, but his response will be required after the players effectively called a state of emergency at Tynecastle. He took a controlling interest at Hearts in February 2005 but, after offering Robertson, then the head coach, a “lesser” role under a new head coach, the former Hearts striker quit. Burley, the former Derby County and Ipswich Town manager, was appointed as manager on June 30 and, despite limited time to assemble his squad, guided the team to eight straight wins in the Bank of Scotland Premierleague.

Before the game against Dunfermline on October 22 last year, Burley parted company with Hearts, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the board as reports claimed that Romanov was interfering with team selection.

The next month, Rix was sacked with Ivanauskas taking over. He claimed the Scottish Cup and a Champions League qualifying place for the second-place finish in the Premierleague. However, after exiting the Champions League and the Uefa Cup this season, the former FBK Kaunas coach stepped down for two weeks because of health reasons.

The Hearts team have the backing of Scotland’s players’ union. Fraser Wishart, the secretary of the Scottish Professional Footballers Association, has praised the squad for maintaining their professionalism under the “difficult circumstances” — the reports that Romanov warned them they would be sold if they did not defeat Dunfermline.

“Over the last couple of years the professionalism, conduct and commitment to Heart of Midlothian FC by the players has been exemplary,” Wishart said. “Under difficult circumstances, they have managed to continue to be successful on the field of play.

“As all those involved in football know, the relationship between the head coach and the players has always, and will continue to be, the most important at a football club. It is clear, however, following recent events the players feel that stability at the club and a clear strategy with regard to the way forward at the club is now necessary.”

Taken from timesonline.co.uk