The stranger in a strange land

Fame, like infamy, comes with a price. Achieving either is more often than not the result of a single groundbreaking idea, otherwise a single ability or personality that is excellent, intriguing or extreme.

One man who would tick boxes next to each of these requirements arrived on these shores seven years ago from a relative outpost of world sport and business, instantly capturing the imagination of the UK and its football community.

Vladimir Romanov, the founder of Lithuania's first private bank, came to Edinburgh as an unknown, but such was the aura he helped create around himself as Hearts' majority shareholder that he became the second-most talked-about man in Scotland after First Minister Jack McConnell in his first season at Hearts, 2005-06.

"There was a question on one of the lottery programmes and the winning answer for the woman to win money was Vladimir Romanov," recalls Charlie Mann, the former spokesman, pictured below, for the Russian-born millionaire. "This woman knew the answer and she was from Norfolk. How on earth did she know that right away? That showed you the power of the media and of what Hearts were achieving at that time."

The foundations of a resounding buzz around this Eastern European enigma - who generated 6400 mentions in Scotland's media in his first full season leading Hearts - had been laid in Romanov's promise to Hearts fans prior to the start of that campaign that his aim was to bring Champions League glory to Gorgie within five years. Bullish and outlandish it may have been, not to mention unrealistic, but that kind of talk served to penetrate the Hearts support with a sense of excitement. There was barely a seat left to fill at Tynecastle on matchdays and the influence of a regular full house must have inspired a top-performing team.

"It's all part of the aura around Romanov," explained Mann. "What we tried to do right at the beginning was to get people across to Lithuania to see Romanov in his own domain, to knock all the rumours that he didn't have the money - because he has got the money and he has got the wherewithal. We had to debunk all that, and part of that strategy was to take people across to Lithuania, to throw open interviews and one of those was an interview with Sky.

"At the end of the interview, the Sky reporter asked him where did Europe sit in his ambitions. So, you're not going to say, 'We're not going to do anything in Europe,' are you? He's got to say, 'We would like to win the competition'. Of course he would like to win the competition. Everybody would like to win the Champions League. But that's slightly different from saying, 'We're going to.'

"He was pressed on that and asked when he would like to do that, what timescale was he giving himself for that, and he shouldn't have answered that question - he should have batted that one away. But, he felt it was his ambition - and it was just an ambition (not an expectation] - was to win it within three years."

A veritable siege mentality enveloped Hearts, and some would argue it still does. 'No-one likes us, we don't care' is a mantra most likely repeated in Russian by Romanov when discussing Hearts, but he pushed that mentality to the boundary of acceptability when challenging the integrity of Scotland's match officials. The first sign that Romanov had a stoic tendency to call it as he saw it came in March 2005. Lithuanian midfielder Saulius Mikoliunas had been sent off for barging into assistant referee Andy Davis after the official's raised flag resulted in the award of a controversial penalty during Rangers' 2-1 win at Tynecastle. Romanov called a conference after the game to vent his frustration.

"Referees in this country have a horrendously difficult job," said Mann. "They make mistakes, but they are honest mistakes. I had a choice where I could say what Vladimir was saying or I could try and dampen the fire - and that (the latter] was the approach I took. I knew what he was thinking was incorrect and, again, that is based on what he has seen in other countries. His opinion of what happens here can often be coloured by what has happened in other countries.

"That's why it's difficult for him - he doesn't quite get it that in this country the referees and officials aren't corrupt at all."

"The challenging of Andy Davis's integrity was one I strongly advocated shouldn't happen. Hearts were in the semi-final of the League Cup the week after and my argument was, 'Okay, we knew that wasn't a penalty, but where do we go as a club if, in the semi-final next week, we get a penalty that could be seen as being dodgy.' I strongly advocated not to do that conference, not to go about it in that manner. That was again a major story in Scottish football."

Romanov's lack of trust for officialdom, says Mann, has its roots in Russia and Lithuania, where sport has historically been riddled with corruption. Given that match-fixing is a live issue in his homeland, does Romanov see disloyalty - both in match officials and within the organisations he runs - where to observers in Scotland it is invisible?

"I remember the conversation that he said he overheard at Celtic Park on the day Hearts drew 1-1 with Celtic (in October 2005]. He overheard a conversation between senior people at both clubs, saying, "What do you think the score will be today?", and somebody said, "Oh, it looks like it could be a 1-1." Now, I would have said it could be a 1-1; most commentators would have said it could be a 1-1. But, in his eyes, on the back of what he might have experienced in Lithuania or Russia, somebody saying before a game that this will finish 1-1 means an awful lot different to the game actually finishing 1-1. It was just part of the whole feeling that he felt that games in Scotland could be fixed, when they can't and they aren't. He said in the media and in other places that he'd heard people say that the game would finish 1-1. It's silly when you think about it now, but you have to put that into the context or what he's used to in another country and what the different culture is."

A week after that game at Celtic Park, Hearts fans were arriving at Tynecastle for the visit of Dunfermline Athletic when news filtered through that manager George Burley had been sacked. If Scottish football has since acclimatised to quickfire actions by Romanov that appear to be of a knee-jerk nature, but at the time there was widespread shock. Even Mann, Romanov's aide and his closest Scottish ally, was surprised. After a meeting the previous evening at Tynecastle with directors and club officials who conveyed Romanov's reservations about retaining the Hearts manager, Mann concluded by the nature of discussions that Burley's position would remain safe.

"At that stage where it was going well, George and Vladimir fell out," said Mann. "It was hugely disappointing, but that's the way it was. We were in a meeting on the Friday at Tynecastle where there was Roman (Romanov], Sergejus (Fedotovas], Liutauras (Varanavicius], and Phil Anderton - and I left that meeting thinking we'd managed to persuade Vladimir it would not be in the best interests of everybody for him and George to part company. We were saying to them, 'Look at where we are - we're doing extremely well'.

"I was trying to win time at least until the end of that calendar year to see where we were at that stage. I'm not saying (the Lithuanian officials at the club] were against what I was saying. I left that meeting thinking that there was trouble ahead but that we might get to the end of the year (with Burley still in charge], that we'd bought some time to try to get the working arrangements better. At that time, I was also working for the BBC, and I was on my way to St Mirren on the Kingston Bridge on Saturday when I took a phone call from David Tanner at Sky to say that George Burley had gone and I didn't know that he had gone. I had also taken a call from Sergejus asking if I was coming to Tynecastle - I said, no, I was going to St Mirren - and then it all broke loose so I had to get off the Kingston Bridge, change clothes, and get across to Tynecastle for the announcement after the game that George had gone.

"I don't know what happened between me leaving that Friday afternoon and me getting the call on the Kingston Bridge at about middayish on the Saturday.

"I was only a consultant employed not by the club, because I never took a penny out of Hearts, but by Romanov to provide advice to say if you take this decision, this will happen, that will happen. At the end of the day, it's his decision and that's the same as any accountant, any lawyer - they can only advise and lead their client, but their client takes the decision."

It is rare that a footballer will feel compelled to criticise the running of their club, less likely three players at once, and even less so in a specially-arranged media conference. Romanov saw The Riccarton Three of Steven Pressley, Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon, who called a press gathering to voice their dissatisfaction at the regularity with which Romanov was changing the Hearts manager, as a major threat to his authority, and chose to remind them of his power. Audacious and disrespectful, suggests Mann, is how Romanov would have perceived their decision to speak out, and the owner is widely thought to have punished the trio, and many more since, for stepping out of line by ordering their exclusion from the first team.

More recent examples include Marius Zaliukas, reported to have stalled on signing a new contract, and Marian Kello, for reasons unknown.

"In Europe, the owners have an awful lot of say in team issues, but the manager is the one who has to take the final decision, and that should always be the case," insisted Mann. "That has to be the way forward - the manager is the man who picks the team and it's his job on the line if that team doesn't win their games. I think [Romanov] has a right to have a say, but he doesn't have - in my eyes - the right to pick teams. He should be involved in the overall process of the season, the transfer policy. It's his money, and he wants toknow it's spent wisely. I think it's something [coaches] have to get used to if they're manager of any team, the way the finances are going."