Elvis has left the building

In almost all revolutions, much blood is often spilled along the way. And this, at least in metaphorical terms, has certainly proved the case in the ongoing struggle at Heart of Midlothian: with bells on. First George Burley left having led the club to its best start since the Great War, then its popular and highly regarded Chief Executive and Chairman, Phil Anderton and George Foulkes respectively, followed soon after. And now, just over six weeks after his statement at Riccarton underlining the 'significant unrest' within the dressing room triggered a saga which once more led to the goings-on at Hearts being thrust into the national spotlight, club captain Steven Pressley has been released, with immediate effect.

First things first: both on and off the pitch, Pressley has been a magnificent servant for Hearts. Joining the club in Summer 1998, at a time when the Jambos were expected to kick on from lifting their first piece of silverware in 36 years to provide a concerted, and long-overdue challenge to the Old Firm, 'Elvis' instead had to settle in during a season which saw the team career in the opposite direction, and even flirt with relegation. Played out of position, his form and confidence suffered: but as the side at last started to recover near the season's end, he began to win the fans over with the kind of wholehearted reliability which would become his trademark.

As the club's financial position suffered, the team broke up, cut-backs were made and Chris Robinson's stewardship attracted more and more opprobrium, Pressley remained a constant, becoming a Scotland regular as well as a marvellously consistent player and leader for the club; and last season, when at last it appeared Hearts had a team capable of giving the Glasgow giants a real run for their money, he demonstrated qualities of diplomacy which would have put Henry Kissinger to shame as Burley, Anderton, Foulkes and Graham Rix all abruptly departed, and Vladimir Romanov's handling of things came under increasingly close scrutiny. "Crisis? What crisis?" As long as Elvis was around, the fans could be confident that the club was in safe hands.

Which is why, of course, the fact that even he has been deemed surplus to requirements would appear so alarming: if Elvis can be treated like this, nobody is safe from 'Vlad the Impaler''s wrath. But strip away the emotion from the situation, and take a step back for a moment. How many of those either reading this, or who have expressed contempt for Romanov's 'dictatorship' of the club, could criticise their employers in public and get away with it? How many British football clubs, or even businesses (especially those taken over by foreign investors) make their decisions according to the wishes of the employees, rather than the boss or owner? In both cases, my suspicion would be hardly any.

Moreover, since making his statement alongside Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon on October 27, Pressley has been offered both a new contract and a coaching role at the club, and for whatever reason, has failed to reach agreement with those in charge. We cannot know why this might be: for all we know, the terms offered may have been derisory, and not worth the paper they were written on. But more likely, surely (and I must stress this is purely speculative on my part), is that the club doubted the extent of Pressley's long-term commitment, were aware of his gradually declining performances on the park, and therefore offered him a deal which, while maintaining his services, intended gradually to phase out his playing career in favour of fast-tracking younger, cheaper alternatives into the team: something which Elvis, who remains part of Walter Smith's plans with the national team, could not accept. So negotiations irrevocably broke down, and Pressley has left as a result.

Many, many clubs lose the services of valued players every season for precisely the above reasons: what makes Hearts any different? The answer, of course, is the perception beloved of the media and footballing world in general of the club having become the plaything of a mad, autocratic owner: the kind of view which holds that, were Romanov a political leader in Soviet times, Pressley would have been banished to Siberia for insubordination.

The club must take a great deal of responsibility for losing control of events, and attracting such an extraordinarily negative press: something which was certainly not the case when Hearts were the talk of British football for all the right reasons during the increasingly distant, halcyon days of early last season. If the accounts of Burley, Anderton and Foulkes' exits in Mark Donaldson's excellent new book, 'Believe!', are true, all three departures were essentially unnecessary and avoidable; and at times since then, the judgement of those in charge has been simply appalling: whether ranting about agents or referees, appointing the woefully out-of-his-depth Rix and then leaving him in charge for too long, pedantically conducting a drawn-out argument with the Scottish Football Association when it rejected Eduard Malofeev's coaching credentials instead of immediately sending him off to study for new ones, or in appointing Malofeev to succeed the unwell Valdas Ivanauskas.

When he wasn't either embarrassing himself by waxing unlyrical about media conspiracies, or disgracing himself by laying hands on fourth officials, not-so-steady Eddie presided over a succession of tactically confused, technically maladroit, shambolic performances, culminating in the worst display in an Edinburgh derby in living memory: that Romanov had such apparent confidence in the man took one's breath away. To employ the trusty old phrase, if Hearts fans never set eyes on Malofeev again, it will be too soon.

But is it not also the case that, for all the many mistakes and misjudgements of the past year and more, too many have failed to at least try and view events through the prism of those running the club? Just as fans, media and even senior players have grown increasingly unhappy and alarmed by Romanov's policies, so, surely, the perspective of both the majority shareholder and his close colleagues is of a club whose traditional way of doing things led it to a position whereby, had the Russian entrepreneur not become involved, it would have sold its cherished home and one remaining major asset, and headed for what in all likelihood would have been a long, lingering death in front of dwindling crowds at Murrayfield.

Having bought and saved the club, surely Romanov has the right to expect to do things his way? Moreover, contrary to popular perception, his way is not an untested one either: it has transformed FBK Kaunas into Lithuania's dominant club, and led to such success at the tiny Minsk club of MTZ-Ripo that the British parallel would involve Charlton continually qualifying for the Champions League. So when figures such as Burley or Pressley challenge his way of doing things, Romanov can justifiably point to both his record, and Hearts' desperately troubled recent past, as reasons for sticking to his chosen course, can he not?

What has been going on since Romanov took charge at the club has been nothing less than a clash, perhaps even a war, of wholly different cultures. The Scottish, indeed British, way of doing things is for the manager to have sole control of picking the team, making signings, and dealing with agents; but this is not Romanov's way. For the club to achieve long-term profitability (without which, there is no point in him having invested in the first place), it needs to develop young players of all nationalities through academies in Scotland, Lithuania and Belarus, loaning individuals between clubs in order to minimise cost, and ultimately selling them on for substantial profits in the future, before reinvesting the proceeds in the team. Moreover, it also requires either the redevelopment of Tynecastle, or the relocation of the club to a more cost-effective site elsewhere in Edinburgh or the surrounding areas: with the development of hotels, shops and flats on the site being just as fiscally important as the state-of-the-art stadium which is envisaged.

Romanov is, in other words, following a long-term, properly thought-through plan; but in his view, it requires all those in his employ to be fully onside. And, rightly or wrongly, Burley, Anderton, Foulkes, Pressley and a number of others have been considered either not to be, or to have flat out obstructed the chances of this plan coming to fruition. When Burley wanted full autonomy over selections and signings, it contradicted Romanov's desire to place talented Lithuanians in the shop window for reasons of economics, as well as to develop the game in the land of his birth; and the owner was also deeply unhappy about the manager's desire to deal with a select number of agents he had cultivated during his long, largely successful career, rather than work with the Russian's own network of contacts in Eastern Europe.

And Pressley's unhappiness at the same preference for certain players over others, together with his desire for the traditional, 'British' system of a manager enjoying complete control to be given sway once more, was again perceived as an obstruction: for Romanov grew up during the time of the Soviet Union. Businessmen who prospered in such an environment tend, for reasons of background, not to brook disagreement, and especially, to demand loyalty and unity above all else: when each of the individuals named above threatened this unity, they had to go.

It remains my opinion that the club has been too quick to view perfectly constructive, and potentially beneficial, criticism as simple disloyalty: and especially that it has continually failed to examine the underlying factors causing, say, Burley or Pressley to react as they did. Equally, though, there can be little doubt that those in charge have faced an astonishing degree of scepticism, obstruction and downright opposition from both the Scottish footballing authorities and the media: and while it is regrettable that they have dug their heels in even more obstinately as a result, it is entirely understandable nonetheless.

Certainly, one senses that as far as Romanov is concerned, he is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't: and while his misguided decision to remain silent for a month really just resulted in the club looking arrogant and aloof, his argument would be that he adopted such a stance in order to show that the press would continue to write nasty things about him, no matter what he did. And on that, it has to be acknowledged that he was proved triumphantly correct.

In order for things not to implode completely, there is now a desperate need for a period of real calm and stability at the club. Ivanauskas' return from sick leave has immediately led to a long-overdue upturn in performances, with Hearts' welcome 4-1 victory over Motherwell yesterday not only their first win in ten games, but also a sign that maybe, through no real fault of his own, Pressley had indeed become a problem over recent weeks thanks to his much-publicised comments. Incredibly, despite their miserable recent run, Hearts are still in fourth position in the SPL, and in strong contention for a UEFA Cup place, if not more: and Romanov can already justifiably argue that his way of doing things, however controversial, led to the club's best campaign in 46 years only last season. If he was hugely in credit as recently as May, he has hardly exhausted it less than seven months later.

It is now up to both sides to reach out and attempt to understand one another: the Romanovs to understand why the fans are so worried, supporters to empathise with the owner's desire to change a failed way of doing things in order to deliver long-term success. Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so it might be argued that the first casualty of change is trust: and while it is beholden on the club to repair and regain that trust, it is also incumbent on all those who love Heart of Midlothian not to jump to conclusions, not to react emotively, but to give those in charge the time to put things right. Romanov, indeed, earned that chance by rescuing the club in the first place. Hearts fans will know if and when the time has come to turn their fire on the man who was once considered their saviour: but in spite of all that has happened, and desperately sad as Pressley's departure undoubtedly is, that hour is still some considerable way off.