Romanov: Rix went 'too late'

Romanov: Rix went 'too late'

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Hearts’ majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov claims he should have sacked head coach Graham Rix even sooner.

The former Portsmouth and Oxford boss, who took over from George Burley in November, was ousted after just 19 games as head coach at Tynecastle.

The Jambos are still in second place in the Bank of Scotland Premier League and in the semi-finals of the Tennent’s Scottish Cup.

But Romanov is still unsatisfied by progress at Tynecastle this season and insists only the players stopped him getting rid of Rix earlier.

He said: "It was my mistake to wait too long for Rix to produce better results.

"The results had not been satisfying the board for some time and the loss of so many points in the league was disappointing.

"I even suggested we say goodbye to him as head coach earlier but the guys in the team insisted in letting him stay and I followed their wishes.

"However, I feel I’ve made a mistake by not acting sooner as we lost 24 points in the league since he took charge, as well as precious time."

Romanov is adamant that Rix was a liability to the club and would have precipitated their drop down the league table.

"If we had stuck by him we would have put ourselves in danger of losing our second place position and failing to qualify for the Champions League.

"As I didn’t see any signs.....continued below

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of progress or signs of the club going forward we couldn’t wait any longer before taking action.

"The points we lost should have taught us a lesson but nothing changed and the situation became too serious to ignore."

Most neutral observers, however, feel Rix was hard done by as he hadn’t done too much wrong in only four months at the Hearts helm.

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