In a great new series RecordSport has teamed up with BTSport to bring you highlights from their new podcast ‘CurrieClub – The Scottish Football Sessions’, hosted by Darrell Currie. The latest episode, out now, features former Hearts stars Steven Pressley and Michael Stewart.
The Tynecastle pair take a deep dive into the turbulent regime of former ownerVladimir Romanov. The episodes are available every Friday for free across popular podcast platforms.‘Currie Club – The Scottish Football Sessions’ is part of a new line-up of podcasts, BT Sport Pods, from BT Sport.
The rollercoaster reign of Vladimir Romanov at Hearts might have ended almost a decade ago but Steven Pressley remembers the chaos and carnage as if it were yesterday. Time can be a healer but it doesn’t erase the incredulity as he recalls the journey undertaken by the Russian-born Lithuanian businessman between 2005 and 2013 when his departure led to Hearts going into administration with their very existence under threat.
Romanov reached the heights with two Scottish Cup wins in 2006 and 2012 but this one-time Soviet Navy submariner also plumbed the depths, ruling with an iron fist and chewing up and spitting out managers at a rate that destabilised the club. Pressley, speaking on BT Sport's Currie Club podcast, had been at Tynecastle since 1998 but lasted 18 months under Romanov, paying the price for leading a rebellion against the owner.
Alongside Craig Gordon and Paul Hartley, the trio became known as the Riccarton Three after holding a press conference at the Hearts training HQ to voice the dismay at the manner in which the club was being run. That was on October 27 ,2006. By the end of December, the man known as Elvis had left the building.
Pressley said: “It was chaotic. Yet when he brought in George Burley as manager there was a definite feeling of optimism. We won the first eight games of the season and drew the next two, the last one away to Celtic.
“I had heard murmurs after the Celtic game that there were problems and it was about the substitutions. We’d drawn 1-1 but after the game Vladimir had a meeting with George and told him if he’d made “these two substitutions we would have won 3-1 or 4-1.’ Obviously George disagreed and it built up over the course of the next couple of weeks then George departed.
“I came in for the next game and was taken into the office by a couple of the Lithuanian employees and told. I remember looking around and seeing the three Manager of the Month awards on the shelf. He’d won them all.
“It derailed us. We were a really strong team and we’d built an amazing momentum. I felt at that stage we had a real chance.”
Hearts finished second and won the Scottish Cup but the results were achieved against a background of uncertainty and Burley’s replacement Graham Rix didn’t last long. Players flooded into Tynecastle, most without Rix’s knowledge, and chaos ensued.
Pressley said: “At one point a witch doctor came in. This was a lady who had cured an illness Vladimir had so he had put total faith in her. She’d come in on a Friday with a machine you’d put your finger in.
“The machine would tell you if you were fit or not to play the following day – a brilliant thing for the manager because he didn’t have to let people down! Recruitment was a scattergun approach. It was a massive dressing room at Heriot Watt but they had to add additional benches into the shower area to accommodate all the players.”
Pressley decided the only way to tackle the regime was to go public with the players’ unhappiness. He sought accomplices and found them in Gordon and Hartley. He said: “I had to choose the right ones. I knew if it didn’t work out for Paul and Craig they would have another opportunity. So those two guys weren’t gambling on their future.
“I totally understood there were others who didn’t want to put their neck on the line but were very supportive. There had been lies and deceit to everyone. The assistant manager was coming to me with problems. I was having to deal with every aspect within the club.
“I genuinely did it in the hope they would see some sense here because it was chaos. After it I was brought into manager Valdas Ivanauskas’ office – I think on Vladimir’s instruction – and offered me the assistant manager’s job. I had to refuse. It went against all I was standing for. But an hour later I went down to the offices and was told I had no future at the club.
“Those behind the scenes felt I had too much power and influence and it affected decisions they wanted to make. I did it with the best of intentions. I have very high values and morals. I did it because I didn’t like what I was seeing within the club.
"Some really good people within that club were being treated horribly. But I regret it in the sense that it did me no favours but not in the sense that I did it for the right reasons.”
Pressley joined Celtic as a free agent but Hearts continued to be a club in meltdown. Michael Stewart, who became captain in his second spell, told the Currie Club: “There were two office staffs – the Scottish staff and the Lithuanian staff. It was like two clubs in one. It was never going to work.”
“Eduard Malafeev turned up in the Alps for pre-season in 2007. It was Soccer AM’s Eastern European warm-ups, star jumps, forward rolls, piggy backs and handball. We played handball all the time and the Lithuanians used to love it. They couldn’t kick the ball but could throw it brilliantly.
“He never spoke a word of English and just used to scream in Russian at the side of the park. We were saying, ‘We can’t have him here’. When he’d been at Hearts earlier he’d had nine games and he hadn’t won one.
“We played Austria Vienna and Vlad gave one of his inspirational speeches, how he used to fight for everything, how he was a boxer. And Roman Bednar said, ‘Yeah, very good’. Vlad just looked at him and carried on talking.
“We played the game and Vladimir came into the changing room with two sets of boxing gloves in his hands. He chucked them at Roman, saying, ‘Not very good?’ and walked out into the car park.
“We walked out and Vlad is there with sleeves rolled up and boxing gloves on. Roman reluctantly put on the gloves. He’s a big guy but not wanting to throw a punch.
“Vlad’s jumping about and eventually catches him with a beauty. Roman was staggering about but before he could do anything Laryea Kingston jumped in. It was just the start of social media and the club knew it would get out, so they released it on their website, trying to control the narrative.
“The club was losing money but he was bankrolling it. There are lots of examples of a benefactor coming into a club and building an infra-structure and grow the turnover to be able to sustain itself.
“It’s now on a very strong footing. They’ve grown the club brilliantly but I always felt he could have done something like that if he’d spent the money in a sensible way.”
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