Blind faith will lead only to dumb despair

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

- from the poems of Emily Dickinson

I've a suggestion for you Mr English

Away 'n boil yir heid

- Scorchio, a loyal Hearts supporter

THE Truth about Vladimir Romanov has been dazzling gradually but you wonder if our friend Scorchio will ever see the light. A few weeks ago after the first eruption of the Steven Pressley saga I advised Hearts fans to stay away from the ground on match day until Romanov came to his senses. It was a sacrifice worth making, I believed, to send a message of support to a brave captain and a degree of warning to a reckless owner.

Romanov doesn't care about angry protests or a championing of wronged players from the stands by way of chants. If you want to capture his attention, empty seats is the only chance you've got.

Scorchio took it badly. And he was not alone. Blind faith is something I've always been wary of and many Hearts fans are full of it. Pressley was dumped from the Hearts squad again on Friday, not a week after Romanov gave assurances that he was part of his plan, hardly a day after one of his minions declared the captain "the cement" that held the team together.

How's that Truth now, boys. Is it dazzling yet?

Here's a prediction. Hearts won't finish in the top four this season. To do so, they need stability and Hearts are never going to have that under Romanov. They also need quality players and they're going to have fewer and fewer of them as time goes on.

Pressley may be gone for good this time and the agents of Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon must be getting itchy trigger fingers. "Gimme the word and I'll get you out of there in five minutes." Sure there'd be transfer fees to be paid but don't doubt for a second that a club wouldn't pay them if they were getting a leader like Hartley, or Gordon, one of Britain's finest goalkeepers.

One of them will leave - and soon.

And you think Romanov will replace them when they go? Sure he will. Like he replaced Andy Webster. Like he replaced Rudi Skacel. This is a downward spiral. Before yesterday you hadn't won in eight games and you were joint fourth in the SPL. This time last season, after 16 league games, your goal difference was +21. You'd scored 32 goals and had kept eight clean sheets in those games. For the last 16, much of it spent in turmoil, you were +16, scoring 29 times and keeping seven clean sheets. Ahead of the St Mirren game yesterday, your goal difference was the worst of the top five, at +5. You'd scored 21 goals and had just four clean sheets.

Do you see a trend, folks?

Pressley's loss could see a worsening of those numbers. How do they intend to keep goals out and how do they propose to score them?

Andrius Velicka has done well. With his five goals he is a veritable machine, which is just as well, for their three most high profile marksmen have all the firepower of a pop gun. Edgaras Jankauskas has gone 289 minutes without scoring. Roman Bednar hasn't found the net in his last 11 games. Michal Pospisil has thrilled the crowds just once in the 493 minutes this season. That's a lot of game-time and not a lot of goals.

But Romanov is blind to all of this. With him, as a player, you can get away with being second-rate as long as you keep your mouth shut. You can be substandard and survive if you toe the line. "When small men attempt great enterprises they always end by reducing them to the level of their own mediocrity." Napoleon Bonaporte said that. In a Hearts context these words get more appropriate by the week.

Taken from the Scotsman