Former Hearts captain gives peek behind the Romanov curtain over eccentric ex-owner's curious fitness regime

Former Hearts captain Steven Pressley has given an intriguing insight into former owner Vladimir Romanov’s somewhat unusual approach to sports science.

The Russian-born Lithuanian businessman ended a long-standing interest in investing in Scottish football when he purchased a 19.6% share in Hearts from chief executive September 2004 and increased his stake to just shy of 30% months later. Romanov then took control when his overall take increased to 82% with the purchase of shares from chairman George Foulkes. That was the beginning of a topsy-turvy eight-year tenure at Tynecastle as the Lithuanian gradually made his way through ten managers including George Burley, Valdas Ivanauskas and Csaba Laszlo.

There were a number of controversies during his ownership - and former Scotland international Pressley has revealed an unusual approach to fitness tests that he believed helped the club’s former owner ‘manipulate’ the side that would be selected by his manager on matchday.

He told the William Hill ‘Warm-up Podcast’: “There were so many [weird moments], right down to the female he brought in to oversee whether players were fit or not prior to games. I think Vladimir had had a cancer scare a number of years prior to that and by all accounts she had helped him through that and helped him out the other end. He put all his trust in her. She had this ‘device’ that she would come in with on a Friday prior to a game.

“It was a device you put your finger on and it would tell you whether or not you could play the following day. It was a great device for a manager who doesn’t want to make big decisions. That was the reality, so they could tell you if you were left out because the device had told you you weren’t in a fit state to play. I think it was a way for him [Romanov] to manipulate the team he wanted to play.”