Baby-faced assassin

TAKE a look at the picture to the right. Vladimir Romanov is holding court at a reception for the newly-crowned Scottish Cup winners at Edinburgh City Chambers. Happy days, those. With a trophy in their cabinet and the prospect of Champions League football to come - oh dear - there wasn't a great deal of turbulence at Tynecastle at the time. For a brief moment, all was blissfully quiet.

Now take another look at the photograph. Who's the young pup standing next to Romanov? He's not a player, though he's young enough to be. No, this is Pedro Lopez, one of the most talked-about individuals at Tynecastle.

Appearances are deceptive. If Lopez looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth then think again. He is, say sources at Hearts, an operator with a hard edge and a penchant for "pissing people off".

He is the talk of the Gorgie Road. But who is he? Where has he come from? And what influence does he exert? Getting information on Lopez is not easy. We know that he is 26 years old, he was born in Bilbao and that he has enjoyed a rapid rise to prominence amid the many controversies that have swirled around Tynecastle in his time there.

We also know that he comes from money and that his father is an acquaintance of Romanov. Maybe he shares some of his boss's qualities, for his uncompromising manner has caused ructions behind the scenes at Hearts.

Lopez is dogged by a growing perception of arrogance. Some would say he makes Vladimir look cuddly. Officially, he is the club's director of infrastructure but the title does little to explain his full role. There doesn't seem an area of the business - on the field and off - that doesn't have his fingerprints on it these days. Where once Roman Romanov looked out for his father's interests at Tynecastle, it is now Lopez who is Vlad's fixer-in-chief.

The Spaniard is without question the most influential and high-powered figure at Hearts on a daily basis and sceptics - a burgeoning group - would suggest his recent decisions have been far from positive for the infrastructure he is paid to oversee.

Before arriving at Tynecastle as deputy to chairman Roman Romanov, Lopez spent his formative years in Moscow, having left his native Spain at a young age. His early months in Scotland were spent outside of the limelight, the first sight of him coming outside Tynecastle in March after he'd helped negotiate a deal that kept Craig Gordon at the club.

As Romanov's chief information gatherer, the fact that Lopez can claim to be overseeing "infrastructure" ensures nothing can realistically be kept from his view. A former employee has described Lopez as an archetypal "school snitch" who picks up strands of information from all areas of Tynecastle and the club training base at Riccarton. It is alleged he speaks to certain players who give him information to take to his master.

If true, this would go some way to explaining some of the obscure team and tactical selections which take place on a weekly basis at Tynecastle. If a non-football person - Lopez - is relaying crucial football information to another non-football person - Romanov - then the thinking, inevitably, will get jumbled. That's the opinion of several sources at the club in any case.

Lopez, clearly, has Romanov's trust, that special commodity the Lithuanian sees in so few of those around him. The young man has authorised deals with agents for players to arrive at the training complex for trials (sometimes done in association with the manager of the day and other times not) while he continues to use his legal background as a basis to negotiate with agents and agree contracts. It was Lopez, for example, who implemented five-year deals for several youth team players despite some of them signing shorter contracts only months earlier. He remains the first and final port of call for clubs seeking to buy or sell players to and from Hearts - a role he only temporarily vacated when a director of football, Jim Duffy, was in place. Nobody should doubt the power he wields.

"The suspicion is that somebody is taking press coverage, or rather snippets of press coverage, and feeding them to Lithuania," said one former employee at the club. "Someone is feeding information to Romanov, but that information is largely what Romanov wants to hear."

Lopez finds himself propelled to a hazardous front-line position while counting on few allies, though he is not without friends. His wife is now working at Tynecastle as the deputy to Hearts' chief buyer, Fiona Henderson. He is understood to be unpopular with key football figures at the club. Some see him as heavy-handed and rude, a view shared by a growing number of concerned fans.

Martin Laidlaw of the Hearts Supporters Trust appeared in print earlier this week openly questioning Lopez's role at the club, but the trust is not the only supporters' organisation that has reservations about the Spaniard. Delegates at the Federation of Supporters' Clubs monthly meeting on December 7 had a discussion over Lopez's attitude, which they say is sneering and dismissive of the fans. At the same meeting it was reported that Lopez had wondered why Romanov was giving such credence to "mere" followers of the club at the Hearts G10 supporters convention on November 24. Romanov was only paying lip-service. From his comments, it would appear that Lopez would have denied the fans even token recognition.

A further illustration of his influence is the fact that Lopez is fronting plans to redevelop the new main stand at Tynecastle, a plan already running behind Romanov's original schedule and one which is due to be formalised by a planning application in February of next year. Despite mounting speculation that Hearts are close to confirming a deal to buy a pivotal piece of land on nearby McLeod Street, progress has been slow.

Indeed, Lopez warned Hearts shareholders last month that "planning in this country can take years". That phrase will have a worryingly familiar ring to it for supporters; Chris Robinson often blamed the council for the club's inability to develop the stadium during his tenure as chief executive.

In emotional terms, though, the part played by Lopez in Pressley's exit from Tynecastle and his role in the brouhaha surrounding Hartley's appearance at a disciplinary meeting this week - the midfielder started on the bench against Aberdeen yesterday - is what worries supporters most. It was Lopez who conducted meetings with the former captain in the lead up to his controversial departure, with one club insider claiming that Lopez's proposal to strip Pressley of the captaincy was the final straw for the 33-year-old.

Romanov gave instruction that Pressley was to be dealt with for his insubordination of speaking out against how team affairs were being run. At the G10 meeting, Romanov had spoken openly of Pressley's long-term role at Tynecastle, how important a figure he was and how he had offered him a coaching position at the club many times. There is little doubt among the supporters that if Romanov loaded the gun it was Lopez who fired the bullets in the Pressley affair.

Lopez met Hartley and union representative Fraser Wishart in a Tynecastle Portacabin on Thursday, the further details of which remain sketchy at best as speculation over Hartley's Hearts future continues to mount, even more so after the ignominy of watching from the sidelines yesterday. Lopez was unmoved by it all.

Effectively Lopez's predecessor, the formal yet amiable Sergejus Fedatovas made a positive impression on all during his short stay at Tynecastle and within the upper echelons of Scottish football. His rendition of The Hearts Song in front of ecstatic shareholders remains an abiding memory of the onset of the Romanov revolution.

Lopez, conversely, is reported to have literally cried foul at SFA officials earlier this season as they fined Hearts for comments attributed to Romanov on the club website and has failed to immerse himself in the culture surrounding an age-old Scottish institution.

Whatever song sheet he sticks to, it seems noticeably different from many of those around him.

Taken from the Scotsman