Heart of Mid-Lithuania Football Club

Readers may have noticed a new link appearing on we love fitba's sidebar this week - The Big Feller blog.

As you hopefully have noticed by now, we love fitba is strictly - and deliberately - non-partisan. Patriotic, fair enough, and a passion for passing football, but that's it. We are sick of the established media's bias, and are making a stand. If Celtic, Rangers, or anyone else deserves a good write up, they will get it here. If anyone deserves a kicking, we love fitba will be wearing its boots.

The Big Feller, by contrast, is an unashamed Jambo, but he's done a huge amount of research in an attempt to answer the question everyone wants to know: what on earth is Vladimir Romanov up to? You can read it here.

It takes a very positive view of the man, outlining a long-term plan to steward Hearts into being a self-financing, successful club. After which, he going to buy himself a castle and design a Romanov tartan.*

There may well be a plan in place that will achieve the Hearts of every jambo's dreams. But there are clouds swirling above Tynecastle. The pitch no longer meets requirements for a club aiming for regular European football and the stadium is badly in need of redevelopment. Romanov has talked about building hotels and flats alongside the stadium but it's a business model that's yet to work in the UK, and anyway there isn't much room as the site is cramped and hemmed in by flats already.

The land is worth around £20m as a housing plot, but then Hearts would need to find a new home. The experiment with Murrayfield hasn't worked and there is no obvious site nearby. Their city rivals Hibs have ruled out a groundshare, so this would be a huge financial burden for a club which is already somewhere north of £20m in debt, which is effectively in the form of an overdraft with UKIO. Aside from its ground, Hearts only other significant assets are the training academy at Riccarton (a joint venture with Heriot Watt University) and a shit-hot goalkeeper, say £4m. None of the rest of the squad are currently valued anywhere near as much, and the compensation for Andy Webster won't be more than a few hundred grand. If they are relying on transfer fees to fund their progress, it's a very risky strategy indeed.

Romanov did put a few million into the club as working capital when he bought his first stake, but the club has spent that and is going to make another big loss this season. So they have short term as well as long term debt issues. Belgian club Genk is currently asking FIFA to bar Hearts from making transfers until they receive the balance of their fee for Mersad Besilja, who joined Hearts in January.

Then there's the man himself. Romanov is not the first club owner to fancy himself as a manager, but it never really works, does it? Interfering in transfer policy is always unwise (even if you're as rich as Roman Abramovich). Getting involved in matchday tactics is even worse. He seems unable to separate his role as owner of a football club from the role of running a football team, and it's likely to end in tears.

Fair enough, George Burley might have been a spendthrift who liked a drink, but for fecks sake man... the team was flying.

*possibly.