Answers absent as questions mount up

THERE ARE many questions you could ask about Heart of Midlothian and grow old waiting for an answer. An "official" might risk discussing the price of the pies, or dare to identify members of the boot room staff. Beyond that, nothing. The Cold War Kremlin was more forthcoming.

They call it a media "blackout".

It more closely resembles a kind of corporate autism. Where once Vladimir Romanov was willing to preach of his "revolution" to all and sundry, today omerta, the oath of silence, is preferred. The press, you see, have joined the list of enemies.

Knock around this business for a while and recognise this as what is known, technically, as a bad sign. It means the club hires spokespersons who are forbidden to speak. It means fans are treated to the old mushroom theory of politics (keep the constituents in the dark and pour manure over them).

It means, above all, one very simple thing: the owner no longer has answers to which he is prepared to put his name.

Whispers leak from the Kremlin walls. One points to a conspiracy theory: the press, fans with typewriters, will do anything to maintain the pre-eminence of the Old Firm. The SFA, the SPL and, by implication, match officials are just as bad. Another murmur says those "spokespersons" cannot clarify matters because they only know as much, or rather as little, as anyone.

Players past and present are gagged, obviously. This is not unique to Hearts, to be fair. It might even pass for commercial confidentiality. The result is, nevertheless, that even diehard supporters can only guess why Steven Pressley was installed in the Tynecastle Hall of Fame one minute and pitched out on his ear the next.

The captain expressed his dismay over internal affairs when the owner does not care for dissent: so much is obvious. But why, precisely, was Pressley angry and upset enough to hijack a press conference? Why did Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon join him? What was said at their "disciplinary hearings"? Why was Gordon dropped yesterday having been appointed captain and allowed to express his determination to foster team spirit? And why was Valdas Ivanauskas - coach or patsy, take your pick - complimentary on Friday about Gordon's efforts knowing the player would be dropped the following day? Plenty of theories, no straight answers, and communications with the media reduced to a bare minimum as sheriff officers beat a path to Gorgie to demand settlement of trifling bills for shop rents and policing.

I'm no tycoon, but none of that sounds like a way to establish a credible business presence in Edinburgh's financial centre. Nor does it get us any closer to answering the biggest question of all: what does Romanov really want?

We can dust down the old responses. Once he portrayed Hearts as imminent, authentic challengers to the Old Firm, as contenders in the Champions League, with a big, expensive squad, the best coaching available, and a home of which supporters could be proud. This was the real revolution. Remarkably, even comically, some fans are still ready to believe in it, and in "Vlad".

They have always puzzled me a little: it's an Edinburgh thing.

Charitably, you could say these loyalists cannot bear to face another calamity after the long fight to save Tynecastle and the club during the Chris Robinson years. Many of their fellow supporters, it is true, have meanwhile lost all patience with Romanov. Yet the number still prepared to grant the little autocrat the benefit of every doubt down Gorgie way is astonishing.

Last week's long, well-written open letter to the 80% shareholder from The Heart of Midlothian Supporters Trust Board caught a flavour of that. Every key point was made: potential squandered, coaches and players humiliated, fans ignored, respect forfeited. But the tone was that of supplicants. The Trust Board pleaded, it did not threaten. It was the collective voice of people who will go on turning up no matter what. Just the thing to make a ruthless banker quake.

Romanov has no idea how to pick a football team: this much we know. He has no strategy for player assets beyond the continuation of a hit-and-miss Baltic import trade. He disposes of coaches when they commit the sin of attempting to coach. He turns the third force in Scottish football into an also-ran in less than a season.

Meanwhile, he refuses to grasp that the traditions of Hearts are a precious gift of a marketing tool. He keeps his lackeys in the dark, packs his "board" with a son, a niece, and a business pal. And he hires a baby-faced enforcer in the shape of Pedro "Trini" Lopez, a "director of infrastructure" with no sense of football's spiritual infrastructure, a boy wonder apparently dedicated to losing friends and alienating people.

The Edinburgh business community will draw its own conclusions, I suspect. The new fact in the British game - as Manchester United, Aston Villa, possibly West Ham, perhaps Liverpool and perhaps Newcastle can demonstrate - is that football can be made to yield real, bottom-line profits. Serious people, from the US to Dubai to the City of London, certainly think so. Fergus McCann proved it at Celtic: sort out the finances, save the club, and escape with your millions.

How does Romanov fit in? If this is not the point of the adventure, what is? Some revolutions first destroy in order to rebuild: is that the strategy? The owner of Hearts makes business sense when he promises to tear down the ancient main stand, buy up the old Tynecastle High and the McLeod Street education centre for £5.9 million, and increase capacity. But how do you then fill the ground if the fans believe an idiot is picking the side while forcing out the best players?

Romanov, we hear, intends to open a branch of his Ukio Bankas in Edinburgh in the near future. Perhaps he intends to back his investment with his credibility in the city. The smart, modern investors in football know, after all, that credibility matters more than anything, that you can lose it in sport as easily as in business. Hearts have been losing frequently, of late, on the field and off.

Taken from the Sunday Herald