Roman: No plans to repay club's debt

Published on Tuesday 27 February 2007 14:30

HEARTS chairman Roman Romanov today declared there are no plans to repay the club's debt, which is to escalate to £40million, and confirmed that no head coach will ever have proper control of team selection at Tynecastle whilst his father remains in control.

Romanov chaired an occasionally tetchy AGM today, during which passed a motion to permit the board to borrow an additional 11.6m on top of their existing 28.4m debt.

It was also made clear during a question and answer session with shareholders that Vladimir Romanov, the club's majority shareholder, will always exercise an influence in footballing matters.

"Maybe a coach will get 50 or 60 per cent control, but definitely not 100 per cent," said Romanov. "There are different reasons for picking a team. We won't play players who don't have a long-term contract. We don't want to develop players to move on to Rangers or Celtic.

"If a players says 'I don't want to play here', then it's goodbye. It's a privilege to play at Hearts. Why should we play a player who has three months left on his contract? We will not, we will play [Andy] Driver because we know he has a five-year contract."

When questioned on the club's finances, and the power of their parent company Ukio Bankas Investment Group, Romanov stated that he is not concerned by the debt increase.

"It's borrowing but we own this money so I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's up to our financial people. This debt is not owed to a third party. UBIG controls assets totalling 500 million. Hearts cannot finance themselves. The money will come from Ukio bank or another bank. We are not going to repay the debt, we own it ourselves, why are you worried about it? Why would we leave we are so happy here.

We are playing in a league where people are used to certain things and they will do everything in their power to keep it that way. Teams steal other players. They call themselves Sir and Lord. look at Hibs. Look at our former captain."