The good people at Scottish Football Forums were kind enough to have me on their podcast this
week.
A chance to focus on capital football: Hibs and the search for yet another manager and Hearts,
Vladimir Romanov, stadiums, the City of Edinburgh Council and trams. Interesting times in Auld
Reekie.
"Hearts are to work with City of Edinburgh Council to look into the feasibility of a community
stadium, the football club have revealed." (BBC Sport)
And the alarm bells start ringing.
Yes, I'm a Hibs fan.
And many Hibs fans will recoil at the very suggestion - and at this stage a suggestion is all it is
- that the City of Edinburgh Council should get involved in a Hearts stadium scheme.
Mad Vlad is coming to town. The Europa Cup may be a mere bauble, but Tottenham's tie against
Hearts is pure gold. Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov deserves a wider audience. His targets include
‘media monkeys' and imaginary ‘maniacs'.
By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Aug 3, 2011) US Soccer Players -- If it's Wednesday, it must be
Edinburgh. That's where Hearts majority owner Vladimir Romanov is wondering aloud why anyone would
question parting company with a manager that has one point out of six to start the season. Wait,
two games into the season with the point coming against defending champions Rangers on opening day?
It seems we're running out of ways to describe Vladimir Romanov's unpredictability.
Apparently from nowhere came the news that Jim Jefferies was to be relieved of his position as
manager. Shock, gnashing of teeth and frank changes of opinion followed.
Often, when bold remarks from an organization become public, they answer more questions thanÂ
they raise. When a statement comes across as the one released by Scottish Premier League club Heart
of Midlothian over the weekend, including references to blackmail, the mafia, and paedophiles, one
must query not only just what exactly that statement is speaking to but also the wisdom of
presenting such an announcement as an official club statement.
The first warning flags are that a "phone call from Lithuania" could alter a team sheet in the
Scottish Premier League, but alas, that's precisely what happened at, you guessed it, Hearts.
BBC Scotland has learned that Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov withdrew Marius Zaliukas from
Saturday's match against Rangers in case he was red-carded.
Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov says he made a mistake in failing to buy Liverpool when he claims the
club was offered to him for £200 million in 2005.
"In 2005, my club Kaunas was playing against Liverpool in the Champions League qualifiers," said
the Lithuanian businessman and banker, who the same year bought a majority shareholding in Hearts.
Barely two weeks ago we posted a piece on Inside Left about the sacking of Jim Jefferies from
Kilmarnock. At the time we made a correct prediction about who would succeed him at Rugby Park but
we failed to even imagine where Jefferies would end up. Now, in light of recent events, it all
seems [...]
A pub conversation on Thursday night centred around SPL managers who might soon be feeling the cold
blast of unemployment.Tony Mowbray and Csaba Lazlo were the two names that cropped up most often.
My own take was that Csaba was safe if he got to the end of the transfer window without getting
embroiled in a full scale bust up with his lord and master.
So the panto season descends.And wasn't Michael Stewart happy to get straight into the slapstick
comedy. His red card was harsh, his subsequent Tony Adam's style, vein popping tirade at the
referee was stupid and his tumble in the tunnel is already becoming the stuff of legend.From
Stewart's tunnel tumble to the mass tunnel rumble ensured that Sunday's game against Hamilton was
not just any other
Vladimir Romanov. Lock up your managers. The giant of Lithuanian football once more walks among the
gnomes that populate the cradle of the game.I thought we'd lost him. First there was the lure of
the televised dance floor and then the threats to his not quite global banking empire caused by the
worldwide recession.
There exists no such concept of the comfortable silence when it comes to football in Edinburgh.
One week, noises out of Tynecastle note the length of time it has been since senior squad players
last saw pounds deposited into their bank accounts, and the next week these same players are
finally paid but rumours of a January firesale for them run rampant.
The phrase "European competition" had a somewhat redundant feel to it this evening, after
Tottenham Hotpur cruised to a comfortable win against Heart of Midlothian at Tynecastle in a match
that felt at times like a training match for the visitors from the Premier League. It was a match
that might, under a certain light, have had the feel of a possible surprise on the cards.
Woe Flowers of Scotland is a post from: Just Football
by William Heaney
Scottish football is in crisis. With Scottish clubs exiting European competition even earlier
than usual, fans and the media are mourning the latest ‘death' of the national sport. Newspapers
and radio phone-ins are leading the now annual debate asking "where do we go from here?
Typically the quality of a pie, whether savoury and sweet, tends to be judged first on the
crust. After all, this is the first thing you see before considering purchasing a pie, the contents
of which might never be fully known until you take that first bite. A crust appearing soggy,
doughy, and rather bland usually sees the pie being passed over in lieu of the pie with a
beautiful, flaky crust that suggests an artisan's hand has touched what will surely be a delectable
edible.
Just Football: SPL 2010-11 Team of the Season is a post from: Just Football
by William Heaney
With the Scottish Premier League 2010-11 season now over, it's time to have a
look back at the players who have made their mark during the campaign. When selecting a team of the
year it's hard to avoid Celtic and Rangers, but thankfully there are those from outside the big two
who have done enough to earn their place.
Csaba Laszlo has been sacked from Hearts by chairman Vladimir Romanov. Laszlo spent 18 months in
the hotseat under the eye of controversial Lithuanian Romanov. The Hungarian boss has been at war
with Romanov over the past due to the lack of investment for new signings.
Laszlo departs Hearts
Hearts were 7 games unbeaten of late and the staff at Hearts have been called to Tynecastle for
a private meeting at 7pm.
The Big Four? Try the Only Four. If fans of the English Premier League are increasingly
bemoaning the seemingly unshakeable dominance of the former, imagine the absurdity of a division
comprised solely of four teams. Yet when the new Lithuanian football season finally kicked off at
the beginning of this month, there was a profound sense of relief in many quarters that this
bizarre scenario had albeit by a hair's breadth been narrowly avoided.
Maybe I don't remember details as clearly as I should. I can barely remember who scored in any
fixtures which happened longer than 2 weeks ago, I can't remember specifics about most transfers
and I don't have any real recollections of specific comments made in television or press articles
over the past few years.
David Obua seems to be a name which crops up more often than anyone else on this blog at the
moment, but again, it was our erstwhile Ugandan who inspired the comments which in turn, inspired
this blog entry. According to Colin Duncan of the Daily Record, Obua was celebrating our win
against Dundee United by dancing like a 'proper pecker'.
See? Just when you think it's safe to express even the tiniest little bit of joy, it all comes
crashing right back down again around your ears. We barely had time to celebrate the win over
Rangers before we received news that the wages issue had become even more bizarre and twisted, with
the press indicating that the highest earners may have agreed to defer their wages until January
and the win bonuses would follow on in 'due course'.
Today's news that the Hearts have been served with a winding-up petition for almost £450K in unpaid tax comes as little surprise to those of us who have been following the club's fortunes over recent years. But such is the capricious and unpredictable nature of owner Vladimir Romanov that it's impossible to tell, at this stage, whether this is just the latest in a series of mini-crises between which the club is stumbling on an ongoing basis, or whether this really is the beginning of an endgame.
A Scottish report linking Peter Nowak to the open Hearts job was adamantly denied by the former
Polish international, but the author of the article stated that it was a "100% definite" that
Vladimir Romanov had received his resume.
"I'm not sure of his chances. I just know he applied," Barry Anderson, the Edinburgh Evening
News writer who broke the news of Nowak possibly heading to Scotland, "His CV is with Hearts at the
moment, that is 100% definite.
Preston have appointed Peter Ridsdale as their new Chairman of Football which, given that the man
collects clubs in financial difficulties like Panini stickers, is a strange move. Here are five men
who have done a worse job, and may well be the only ones: 5) Ken Richardson Doncaster Hired two
gangsters to burn [.
